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NEGROES AND THEIR TREATMENT IN 
VIRGINIA FROM 1865 TO 1867 



By 

JOHN PRESTON McCONNELL, M. A., Ph. D. 

Professor of History and Political Science 
in Emory and Henry College 



Print«d by 

B. D. SMITH & BROTHERS, 

Pulaski, Va. 



0r 









Copyright 1910 
by J. P. McCONNELL 






©CI A 2^ 



PREFACE. 

FEOM 1865 to 1867 an unprecedented revolution was 
witnessed in the Southern States. la the following 
pages an attempt is made to note the essential fea- 
tures of that upheaval through which the negroes passed 
in two years from chattel slavery to full citizenship. 

In these two momentous years the white people were 
called upon to adjust themselves not only to the full recog- 
nition of the freedom of the negroes but to accept them as 
fellow -citizens with equal civil and political rights. 

Many old prejudices had to be reckoned with in this 
adjustment. This revolution was attended by less demoral- 
ization of society in Virginia than in most of the other 
Southern States, nevertheless the transition from the old 
order to the new was painful and confusing. 

It is hoped that this discussion of that troubled period 
will, in some measure, prove useful in correcting any 
wrong impressions that may yet exist as to what were the 
sentiments of the people in regard to the changed condition 
of the negroes and what was the civil, political and social 
status of the freedmen during that unhappy period which 
culminated in the enfranchisement of the blacks by con- 
gressional act. 

This little book is a part of a proposed larger work 
treating the history of Virginia since the War between the 
States. The cares and responsibilities incident to my work 
as a teacher have thus far prevented my finishing the pro- 
posed work. 

In the preparation of this work I am indebted to Dr. 
R. H. Dabney and many other persons for assistance in 
many ways. I am especially indebted to my wife, who 
contributed many helpful suggestions and prepared the 
manuscript for the printer. 



JOHN PRESTON McCONNELL. 



Emory and Henry College, 
December, 1909. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Number and Distribution of Negroes in Virginia. 

CHAPTER II. 
Public Opinion in Virginia in Regard to Emancipation. 

CHAPTER HI. 
The Effect of Emancipation on the Negroes. 

CHAPTER P7. 

Disturbing Forces. 

CHAPTER V. 
The Evolution of a System of Hired Labor. 

CHAPTER VI. 
Vagrancy and Vagrancy Laws. 

CHAPTER VH. 
Contract Laws. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Slave Code Repealed. 

CHAPTER IX. 
Outrages on Freedmen and the Civil Courts from 1865 to 1867. 

CHAPTER X. 

Frbedmen and Civil Rights in 1865 and 1866. 

CHAPTER XL 

Enfranchisement of the Freedmen. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Education of Freedmen. 

CHAPTER Xm. 
Apprentice Laws. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Negro Marriages. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Insurrection. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Separate Churches for Negroes. 

CHAPTER XVH. 

Effects of the Reconstruction Acts. 

CHAFfER XVHI. 
Summary and Conclusion. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Vir- 
ginia from 1865 to 1867. 



chapter 1. 

Number and Distribution of Negroes in Virginia. 

THE surrender of General Lee at Appomattox virtual- 
ly closed the War between the States. This contest 
had freed the negroes throughout the seceding States; 
but the future status of the freedmen had not yet been 
determined. 

In the spring of 1865 there were probably about half a 
million negroes in the State of Virginia — a number suffi- 
ciently large to prove a very disturbing factor amongst a 
white population of less than 700,000. It added much to 
the gravity of the situation that in a large part of the State 
the negroes were a very small part of the population, while 
in other grand divisions of the State the excited and idle 
freedmen were in a decided majority. There are no figures 
giving the population of Virginia in the year 1865, yet the 
census reports of 1860 or 1870 will enable one to determine 
with considerable accuracy the distribution of the white 
and colored population throughout the State at the close of 
the war. 

The census of 1870 shows, in the eighteen southwest 
counties of the State, a white population of 152,297 and a 
colored population of only 21,595. In the twelve Valley 
counties having a white population of 117,321 there were 
only 25,681 negroes. In these two great divisions of the 
State, embracing thirty counties with a white population of 



\ 



2 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

269,618, there were only 47,276 negroes who constituted 
less than fifteen per cent, of the entire population. 1 

In these two sections the greater part of the labor had 
always been performed by white men as free laborers work- 
ing either for themselves or for other white men for wages. 
Slave labor had never been such an important factor in the 
industry of these communities as it had been in the counties 
east of the Blue Ridge; for this reason, there was less dis- 
turbance of the industrial system of these sections, the 
whites more readily adapted themselves to a system of free 
labor, and the supply of labor was much less demoralized 
than in the parte of the State where society and industry 
were, in a larger degree, based on slave labor.' 2 Probably 
the negroes did not desert the farms and their accustomed 
trades to such an extent in these sections as they did in the 
eastern and southeastern.. parts of the State. If as large a 
percentage of them did leave their old homes and trades 
they were very readily absorbed as barbers, porters, livery- 
men and in other menial services about the towns. 

In the section of the State east of the Blue Ridge there 
were, according to the census of 1870, 442,471 whites and 
465,565 blacks, giving the negroes a majority over the 
whites of 23, Oil. 3 In 1860 the Southside, the counties 
south of the James River, had a negro population of 207,- 
668. This population had increased considerably by 1865. 4 
It is safe to say that these counties contained at least 215,- 
000 negroes in the spring of 1865. Here a large part of the 
labor had always been performed by negro slaves. In the 
counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Charlotte, Cumberland, 

'For distribution of negroes throughout the State, see pp. 5, 69-70, 
Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870. 

2 For demoralized state of labor and industry in the eastern part of 
the State, see the Virginia newspapers of that period. 

3 Pp. 69-70, Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870. 

4 This section was comparatively little disturbed by army operations 
until near the close of the war. 



, 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 3 

Nottoway, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Prince George, Sur- 
ry and Sussex, the negroes constituted about two- thirds of 
the inhabitants. In Buckingham, Lunenburg, Southamp- 
ton, Dinwiddie and Halifax, the negroes were in majorities 
ranging from 2, 000 to 7, 000 in each county. In Campbell 
and Pittsylvania they had a majority in a combined popu- 
lation. 5 In many other counties in eastern and southeast- 
ern Virginia the negroes were in the majority and were 
more ignorant than in the sections of the State where they 
were less numerous. As might be expected it was in these 
sections that the emancipation of the slaves brought most 
hardships and disorder. 

In addition to these agglomerations of negroes in cer- 
tain sections of the State, thousands of them had thronged 
to the cities and towns and there taken up their abode. 
The census of 1870 shows that the thirty-five cities and 
towns of the State, for which the population was given in 
1860 and 1870, had an increase of only 705 white inhabi- 
tants, while the increase of the colored inhabitants in the 
same towns was 25,834. This increase of colored popula- 
tion took place almost entirely in the section of the State 
where the negroes were most numerous. In many of the 
towns of the Valley and the Southwest there was an actual 
decrease in the number of negroes. In the decade from 
1860 to 1870 the white population of these thirty-five towns 
grew from 88,3S1 to 89,086. The colored population in 
the same cities leaped from 41,675 to 67,509. The number 
of negroes in the District of Columbia had grown from 
14,316 in 1860 to 43,404 in 1870, of whom 16,785 had been 
born in Virginia. Alexandria's colored population had in 
the meantime grown from 2,801 to 5,301; Hampton's 
from 855 to 1,841; Richmond's from 14,275 to 23,110; Nor- 
folk's from 4,330 to 8,766; Portsmouth's from 1,477 to 



5 For number and character of negroes in the Southside, see passim 
Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman. 



4 Negroes and 7 heir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

3,617. There had been very little increase in the white 
population in any of these cities, and in Alexandria, 
Lynchburg, Manchester, Petersburg, Williamsburg, Ports- 
mouth, Fredericksburg and Winchester there had been an 
actual loss in the number of the whites for this same 
decade. 6 The number of negroes in the towns and cities of 
Virginia in 1865 was trom twenty-five to fifty 7 per cent, 
greater than it was in 1870, before which time many of 
them had returned to the farms. 

The census of 1870 shows that more than 50,000 
of the negroes in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Dis- 
trict of Columbia, Massachusetts and New York had 
been born in Virginia. 8 Many of them had gone 
to these states before the war, but it is not possible to de- 
termine at present how many. It is a significant fact that 
the colored population of Virginia and West Virginia was 
18,086 less in 1870 than in I860 9 . A constant stream of 
negroes poured across the Potomac and Ohio rivers from 
1862 to 1867. Kentucky and Missouri had also lost about 
the same percentage of their blacks. The number of 
negroes in each of the seceding States, except Virginia, was 
larger in 1870 than in 1860. In some of the states, in 
which the military operations had not been so constant, the 

6 Pp. 278-283, Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870. 

7 This statement is based on estimates made by conservative citizens 
who were living at that time. The press and army officers spoke repeat- 
edly of the influx of negroes to the cities. There are no figures giving the 
number of negroes in the towns in 1865. Gen. Halleck reported, June 26, 
1865, that there were from 30,000 to 40,000 free negroes in Richmond at 
that time. Serial 97, Official Records of War of Rebellion. 

For account of the desertion of their homes by negroes see Richmond 
Daily Enquirer, May 22, 1866; The Richmond Republic, May 16, 1865, and 
Aug. 10, 1865. Women, with their children, walked three or four days to 
get away from their old homes to the towns. 

8 Table VI, Vol. Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870. 

"Table II, Ibid. See this table also for gain or loss in negro population 
in other states. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 5 

increase of the negro population had been very marked 
being 79,000 in Georgia and more than 30,000 in several 
other states. The remoteness of most of the slave states 
from the free states rendered "refugeeing" very difficult 
for all negroes and impossible for most of them. The pres- 
ence of the Federal armies and the proximity of free terri- 
tory rendered it comparatively easy for many negroes in 
Virginia to find their way across the Ohio or the Potomac 
to the free states. 

It is, therefore, easy to see, that in the spring of 1865 
the whole slave system was utterly destroyed in Virginia; 
the former slave population was agitated and unsettled; 
the old forms of industry and social life based on slavery 
were irrevocably gone. 



CHAPTER II. 



Public Opinion in Virginia in Regard 
to Emancipation. 

Although Congress, in the Crittenden Resolution of 
July, 1861, had declared that the war was not waged to 
interfere with any of the domestic institutions of the states, 
but solely for the preservation of the union of the states, 
and that the war should cease when that union was assured, 
it was felt everywhere that the fate of slavery was an issue. 
The South had entered into the contest feeling that failure 
would involve the downfall of slavery. Before the war was 
finished it became quite as much the aim of a large part of 
the people of the Northern States utterly to extirpate 
slavery as to preserve the union. It was felt that it was 



6 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

necessary to destroy slavery to save the union. With 
these clearly defined issues the war was fought out. 

At the close of this four years' contest, in which the 
people of the South with an unanimity unparalleled resisted 
the invading armies as long as honor demanded or human- 
ity permitted, it was naturally asked by the world : "Do 
the people of Virginia accept the abolition of slavery in 
good faith, or is their acquiescence in its destruction only 
a ruse of exhausted disloyalty, by which they hope to gain 
strength and opportunity to renew the contest to restore 
slavery, or to accomplish by cunningly devised legislation 
the re-enslavement of the negroes ? Has the war merely 
destroyed the name of slavery without destroy iug its 
reality?" 

To appreciate just how the people of Virginia regard- 
ed the abolition of slavery it is necessary to understand 
what they thought of this institution prior to the war. 
Many slaveholders in Virginia had long considered slavery 
a burden on the masters and a detriment to the best inter- 
ests of the community. 1 It had long been a question with 
many of the most thoughtful whether slavery in Virginia 
was profitable in the mere production of wealth. Through- 
out the South slave labor was being driven to a few regions 
devoted to the cultivation of tobacco, cotton and sugar 
cane. Slaves were not as valuable in Virginia as in the 
undeveloped states of the Southwest. The average hire of 
an able-bodied man slave for the four states, Arkansas, 
Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana was in i860 a little more 
than 60 per cent higher than in Virginia. 2 As a natural 



°Congressional Globe 1865-1867(passim) .debates on Preedinen's Bureau 
Bill, Civil Rights Bill, Constitutional amendments and Reconstruction 
acts. See also Summer's speech, Congressional Globe 1864-1865, p. 989. 
See Carl Schurz's report, Congressional Globe 1865-1860, p. Iii05. 

^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168. Ballagh, A History of Slavery in 
Virginia. 

2 Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture 1867, p. 416. Vir- 
ginia never engaged in breeding and raising negroes for the slave market. 
For conclusive evidence of this see The Domestic Slave Trade by W. H. 
Collins. 



I 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 7 

consequence slavery had lost much of its popular support 
in Virginia as compared with the "Cotton States;" for any 
community is apt to see the weakness of slavery when it 
has once ceased to be profitable, even if it cannot see the 
means of abolishing it. 

The same spirit that had caused Jefferson and Henry 
to deplore the evils of slavery persisted in Virginia. Like 
Jefferson, Henry and Tucker at the beginning of the cen- 
tury, many owners of negroes in the middle of the century 
would gladly have been free from their slaves ; but, 
embarrassed by the difficulties and dangers of emancipa- 
tion and restrained by the meshes of this all-permeating 
institution, they did not feel justified in taking the initiative 
in this general manumission. The atrocities of the lately 
emancipated West India negroes deterred many from fol- 
lowing their desire to liberate their own servants. In addi- 
tion to all these difficulties every plantation was a little 
community in which there were many helpless old negroes, 
cripples, and children who were unable to provide for 
themselves. To liberate these and turn them adrift would, 
under the mantle of philanthropy, have been extreme 
heartlessness and cruelty. The white master could not feel 
that it was his duty to continue to care for the dependents 
and at the same time emancipate the able-bodied sons or 
fathers to lead idle and vagrant lives. The master, there- 
fore, however humane or philanthropic he might be, was 
under the moral obligation to hold these plantation groups 
together. 3 

A plan of gradual emancipation was seriously discussed 
in the General Assembly of Virginia in 1831-32*. Public 
sentiment was rapidly moving toward a general emancipa- 
tion about the time the anti-slavery crusade began in the 



SBruce's Plantation Negro as a Freeman discusses, in an admirable 
manner, the economy of a Virginia slave plantation and the difficulty of 
breaking it up. 

^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168. 



8 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

North. The abolitionists became quite offensive in their 
criticism of slavery in the South. The Virginians, always 
jealous of outside intermeddling with their affairs, resented 
the efforts of Northern agitators. Naturally the movement 
^as thus checked in the State. Nevertheless the Legisla- 
ture continued to provide for emancipation and granted an 
annual appropriation of $30,000 and a poll tax of one 
dollar per head on every male free negro of the age of 
twenty one years and under fifty-five to be used in coloniz- 
ing free negroes in Liberia. r> This appropriation, continued 
until 1860, is a proof of the sincerity of the Virginians in 
their professions of interest in the gradual abolition of 
slavery, and shows how keenly they realized the difficulties 
of emancipating the negroes and allowing them to remain 
in the State, and further explains why so many men, who 
detested the whole system, hesitated to free their slaves. 
There were statutes against the immigration of free negroes 
into the State. 6 The presence of negroes in any capacity 
was felt to be a perplexing problem of which the most 
practical solution was either gradual emancipation and 
colonization or, if this was impracticable, the continued 
servitude of the negroes. There had been a great amelior- 
ation in the treatment of slaves in the twenty-five years 
preceding the war. Many benevolent individuals exerted 
themselves to bring about this state of things by creating in 
the public mind a spirit of reprobation of cruelty to slaves. 7 
Gov. F. H. Pierpout, of Virginia, in his message to 
the Legislature in 1865, speaking of the negroes, said that 
their condition was a hard one as they had the "theory of 
the politicians and the dogma of the divines against them. 8 " 
His statment is true if he meant that the politicians of the 
State considered the negro a race so radically different from 

50ode of 1860, p. 520. 

6Code of I860, p. 810. 

7 Hildreth, Despotism in America (passim). 

8 American Annual Cyclopaedia 1866, p. 763. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 9 

the whites that it was impossible for them to be assimilated 
by the whites; that they were a race incapable of sharing 
in the government of the State; and that the wisest solution 
of this question for both races at that time, at least, was the 
political and social subordination of the weaker race to the 
stronger. The statement is not true if he means that the 
great mass of the people either in 1860 or in 1865 bore any 
malice or hatred to the negroes, or that they wished to 
make hard the condition of their lives. 9 In regard to the 
statement that the dogmas of the divines were against the 
negroes, the great body of the ecclesiastical leaders of the 
State were not in love with the institution of slavery. 
They did not wish its presence but simply accepted it as 
the wisest and most humane solution of the presence of the 
negroes amongst the whites. They felt that the mere hold- 
ing of a negro as a servant was not obviously opposed to 
the spirit and doctrine of the Christian religion. They 
were deeply interested in their spiritual welfare and car- 
ried on a successful propaganda among them with the re- 
sult that a very large percentage of them were severely 
orthodox Christians when they became freemen in 1865.° 

a See State newspapers of that period in regard to the feeling toward 
negroes. 

A letter from B. Johnson Barbour, Esq., published in The Republic, 
Richmond, Va., Aug. 12, 1865. * * * * "In their general conduct 
they (the whites) should recognize the two great facts which the war has 
established— Life to the Nation and Death to Slavery. It is our duty to 
deal kindly and gently with a race suddenly emancipated, even though 
in the first flush of freedom they should violate our traditional ideas of 
subordination and discipline. By calmness and patience we shall do 
much toward repressing that spirit of agitation which, through folly or 
crime, would make freedom a curse instead of a blessing to the negro. 
His future condition is the only difficult problem left unsettled by the 



war. 



°This is the universal testimony. These facts are forcefully brought 
out in a personal letter from Rev. J. vVilliam Jones to the writer. 

The following preamble and resolution adopted by the East Hanover 
Presbytery is representative of the spirit of the other denominations: 

"In consideration of the fact that the largest proportion of the colored 
population are within the bounds of East Hanover, this Presbytery would 



10 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

There were slaveholders who, in their heart lessness and 
greed for gain, made the life of the slave a burden and thus 
made slavery odious iu the eyes of the world. It is doubt- 
less true that some ministers were over anxious to palliate 
the evils and to magnify the necessity and the Christianity 
of slavery. Still it is true that the great body of the most 
thoughtful men of all classes regarded human slavery as an 
unfortunate inheritance, a burden from which they wished 
to be relieved by some safe and practicable means. 

Entertaining these opinions the people of Virginia did 
not hesitate to accept the abolition of slavery as one of the 
most patent results of the contest out of which they emerged 
in 1865. The events and agitation of the four years' war 
had so shattered and demoralized slavery that all sensible 
men felt that its fate was sealed in Virginia, whatever 
might be the wishes of the whites. Large numbers of the 
slaves had enjoyed a taste of personal liberty within the 
Union lines. It was not to be expected that they, having 
once felt that they were free, would readily take again 
their former places as slaves. In the Valley, in the North- 
ern, North Central and Tidewater counties of the State, the 
old plantation life was broken up. It was estimated in the 
spring of 1865 that 50,000 negroes in Virginia had deserted 

express its undiminished interest in the spiritual welfare of this class of 
our people and its solemn conviction of the peculiar responsibilities now 
resting upon us in consequence of the new relations they now sustain 
to us. 

"Remembering that our colored friends have an equal interest with 
us in the redemption provided by Christ Jesus, and mindful of the claims 
of those who were born and reared among us, and many of whom are 
still members of our families and in our employment, and regarding it 
both as our duty and privilege to do all in our power to promote their 
spiritual well-being, Jiesolved, That by means of family and Sabbath 
school and catechetical instruction, by the preaching of the Gospel for 
their special benefit, we will endeavor, with unabated zeal, to advance 
their religious culture, with the hope and prayer that we may be made 
equally instrumental with other denominations— our co-laborers with us 
— in the great work of bringing them into the fold of Christ." — Richmond 
Republic, Sept. 21, 1865. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 11 

their homes and masters. 1 These were generally the most 
intelligent and aspiring of their race — many of them being 
soldiers in the Federal army. 

The Virginians, seeing that slavery was already "worn 
out by the friction of the war," had laid down their arms 
in 1865, understanding full well that they had seen the last 
of slavery; and, in their hearts, many were thankful that 
they were rid of it. 2 While few recognized that it had been 
constitutionally abolished, most were glad to accept it as an 
accomplished fact and felt that the dire consequences that 
seemed about to follow the wholesale and immediate eman- 
cipation, were not chargeable to them. After the close of 
hostilities and the return of the soldiers to their homes, 

iRichmond Times, July 14, 1S65. 

2May 17, 1865, Richmond Times said : "The fate of slavery in Virginia 
was, by the natural effects, * * settled in Virginia before the Confed- 
eracy collapsed. * * Under such circumstances, if the continuance of 
slavery was decreed tomorrow, the shattered wreck of the dilapidated 
carcass of the institution would prove, we fear, little better than an eye- 
sore and a stumbling block in our path, a mildew upon our prosperity." 

Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 23, 1865, says : "The abrogation of property 
in slaves" is one of the indisputable results of the war. The Richmond 
Republic, May 19, 1865, says: "The war has administered a death blow 
to slavery. Nothing, therefore, is more idle or vain than the hope or ex- 
pectation of prolonging the existence of the institution (of slavery) by 
expedients which should aim to preserve the reality while relinqliishing 
the name." However, the Daily Dispatch, Jan. 4, 1865, claims tb.aff4.the 
condition of the negro, if freed by the Federal Government, would be 
more pitiable than that of the slave and that a new slavery would arise. 
Robert Ridgeway, in The Whig, Aug. 11, 1865, says: "The abolition of 
slavery is one of the accomplished results of the war and it becomes the 
duty of the people of Virginia to accept that result in entire good faith, 
dismissing from their minds the chimerical idea, if any such idea is en- 
tertained by them, that it can, in any event, ever be re-established. The 
Richmond papers from April, 1865, to the close of the year, give accounts 
of county mass-meetings in various parts of the State, accepting unre- 
servedly the abolition of slavery as an accomplished and irrevocable fact. 
The General Assembly, in its Joint Resolution of Feb. 6, 1866, uncondition- 
ally accepted emancipation. Acts 1865-6, p. 449. Hon. A. H. H. Stuart's 
"Narrative of the Popular Movement in Virginia in 1865, and the Com- 
mittee of Nine," discusses very fully the feeling in regard to the uncondi- 
tional emancipation of the slaves. 



12 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

large and representative meetings of the white citizens 
were held throughout the State, in which resolutions were 
adopted declaring that the people accepted in good faith 
and without mental reservation the results of the war, 
amongst which they regarded the abolition of slavery the 
chief. Many of the most prominent men in the State, by 
speeches and open letters in the newspapers, expressed their 
acquiescence in emancipation and urged all the people 
everywhere to accommodate themselves to the changed 
relations they bore to their former slaves, to deal fairly 
with them, to employ them for wages, or to share with 
them the crops. 

The negroes were at once recognized as free. Their 
right to assert their freedom was not questioned. Col. O. 
Brown, the assistant Commissioner of the Freed- 
men's Bureau for the State of Virginia, in his report 
to Gen. O. O. Howard, at the close of the year 1865, 
says: "It is believed that there is not within the State a 
person who does not understand and successfully assert his 
right to freedom. 3 " If there had been any denial of free- 
dom to any freedman in the State it is not probable that it 
would have escaped the attention of Col. Brown, as the 
agents of the Bureau were scattered over the State and 
were generally careful to investigate any real or imagined 
wrong done a negro, and the negroes were not negligent in 
reporting their troubles to the Freedmen's Bureau. 

In addition to the evidence furnished by the numerous 
county meetings, in regard to the full and frank acceptance 
of the freedom of the negro, the editorials and the corre- 
spondence of the representative newspapers of the State re- 
peatedly expressed full recognition of the unconditional de- 
struction of slavery. 4 In the summer of 1865 it was reported 

3 Col. O. Brown's report of the operation of the Feedmen's Bureau in 
Virginia 1805, published in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 

••See newspapers of that period. April 25, 1865, Gen. Halleck, in letter 
to Secretary Stanton, quotes Alexander Rives as saying that nearly all 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 13 

that a man in Petersburg was paying $10.00 per capita for 
the claim of ownership of able-bodied negroes, in the belief 
that they would be remanded to their old condition. So 
absurd did his course seem that he was made a subject of 
ridicule and held up by the press as a sort of harmless and 
good-natured lunatic. It was declared by the press that 
the restoration of slavery was not desired, even if the courts 
should hold the various proclamations and acts emancipat- 
ing the slaves unconstitutional. 5 The following quotation 
from Ex- Gov. Henry A. Wise expresses about what many 
representative Virginians thought in the summer of 1865: 
' 'So far from my being opposed to the name 'freedom' as 
indicating the condition of slaves freed by the war, the 
chief consolation I have in the result of the war is that 
slavery is forever abolished; that not only slaves are, in 
fact, at last freed from bondage but that I am freed from 
them. Long before the war ended, I had definitely made 
up my mind actively to advocate emancipation throughout 
the South. I had determined, if I could help it, my 
decendants should never be subject to the humiliation I 
have been subject to by the weakness, if not the wicked- 
ness, of slavery; and while I cannot recognize as lawful and 
humane the violent and shocking mode in which it has 
been abolished, yet I accept the fact most heartily as an 
accomplished one, and am determined not only to abide by 
it and acquiesce in it, but to strive by all means in my 
power to make it beneficent to both races and a blessing 
especially to our country. I uufeignedly rejoice at the fact, 
and am reconciled to many of the worse calamities of the 
war because I am now convinced that the war was a special 
providence of God, unavoidable by the nations at their ex- 



parties were ready to abandon slavery and that a' popular vote would be 
strongly against it. P. 939, serial 97, Official Records of War of Rebellion. 
For account of delegation sent from the Legislature of Virginia to Presi- 
dent Johnson, see p. Ill, App. Congressional Globe 1865-1866. 

5 Lynchburg Virginian, June 12, 1865, and for several days following. 



14 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

treme, to tear loose from us a black idol from which we 
could never have been separated by any other means than 
those of fire and blood, sword and sacrifice." 6 

Col. O. Brown, the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in 
Virginia, divided the people of Virginia into three classes 
accordiug to their views of the negro and the Freedmen's 
Bureau. Of the first class he said: "Many of the citizens, 
under the control of tradition, habit and education, only 
sullenly acquiesced in the freedom of their former slaves." 7 
He further complained that this class regarded the colored 
population as necessarily and appropriately servile and 
unfit for freedom; that they felt that negroes were in some 
way responsible for the failure of the Confederacy. For 
this reason bethought this first class "wholly unqualified" 
for co-operation in the work of the Bureau. 

It is true that many people accepted the abolition of 
slavery as an accomplished fact without recognizing the 
legality or justice of the manner in which it was accom- 
plished; but even this class entertained no hope, and but 
little desire, of seeing its restoration attempted. 

It is also true that most people in Virginia did then 
regard and always have regarded the negro as an inferior 
race and unqualified to take a leading part in the govern- 
ment of the State; but this opinion of his place in society 
did not indispose the whites to deal justly with him and 
to grant him all civil rights and several political rights as 
will be shown later. 

The feeling that a race or an individual is an 
inferior in point of ability and power begets a sense 
of kindly interest and sympathy for the weaker party 
by the stronger rather than a desire to do wrong or 



«This letter is quoted exactly as published in the Lynchburg Virgin- 
ian, Sept. 9, 1865. 

'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 15 

violence to the weakling. 8 Such was the case in 
1865 in Virginia in regard to the negroes, from whom so- 
ciety hoped to receive less and to whom it felt inclined to 
give more than it was prepared to receive from and give to 
the whites. The enfranchisement of the negroes in 1867, 
and the efforts to place the whites under the domination of 
the blacks, did much to destroy the interest and sympathy 
which the whites had always felt for them. 

Of the second class into which he divided the people, 
Col. Brown said: "Another class, numerically small but 
of the best talent, culture and influence, not only accepted 
the situation, but with a wise foresight and noble patriotism 
were ready to co-operate with the (U. S. ) government for 
the speediest restoration of tranquility and law, and to 
assist the Bureau in its endeavor to bring the highest good 
to all classes out of the present evils." 9 

From these quotations it is seen that co-operation 
or failure to co-operate with the Freedmen's Bureau 
in 1865 is one of the chief marks by which Col. 
Brown distinguishes and classifies the people. Per- 
haps it was impossible for the agents of the Freedmen's 
Bureau at that time to understand how any white man could 
sincerely accept the abolition of slavery and at the same 
time stand aloof from the Bureau. Still, many who unre- 
servedly recognized and accepted the complete destruction 
of slavery were firmly convinced that the Bureau's purpose 
and method, with the possible exception of its educational 
work and the support of the absolutely helpless negroes, 
were unwise and tended to widen the chasm between the 
whites and the blacks. 



«July 7, 1865, Richmond Times says: "The collapse of the Confed- 
eracy having, as we anticipated, resulted in the overthrow of slavery, we 
have no wrongs to avenge at the expense of the negro. It is to our inter- 
est to make him a useful laborer, and cruelty to the emancipated slave 
would be just as absurd a piece of inhumanity as cruelty to a horse or an 
ox." 

9 Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 



16 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

Iii addition to the two classes just mentioned Col. 
Brown declared that "a third and more numerous class, 
because forced to acknowledge the freedom of their for- 
mer slaves, wished either to effect their entire removal 
from the State or bind them by such contracts as would 
allow them but little more freedom than they formerly 
possessed. 9 " 

The perplexed and unsettled state of the public 
mind is indicated very clearly in this quotation. 
By some people it was felt that the whites and blacks could 
not live together on terms of equality. To some the only 
solution of this problem seemed to be a general emigration 
of one of the races. There was much talk of such a move- 
ment of the negroes either to some territory of the United 
States or to Africa. Numbers of the most intelligent col- 
ored people in the State were setting out for Liberia; others 
were preparing to follow. On the other hand many whites, 
despairing of peace and prosperity of the community, at- 
tempting to ignore racial differences and antipathies, were 
planning to find for themselves new homes in Mexico or in 
some of the South American States. Wiser heads, under- 
standing the improbability, if not the impossibility of a 
general emigration either of the whites or blacks, were try- 
ing to devise some plan to reorganize the social and indus- 
trial framework so suddenly revolutionized by the immedi- 
ate manumission of the colored race. The press almost 
universally discouraged emigration schemes and urged the 
people to adjust themselves to the new conditions. 1 

9 Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1KG6. 

"A considerable number of negroes left Lynchburg in October, 1865, 
for Liberia. Others were to follow. The emigrants were very unfortun- 
ate in Liberia. It was reported that some of them were eaten by canni- 
bals. All that were able to do so returned to Virginia. Lynchburg Vir- 
ginian, Oct. 19, 1865. 

iFor discussion of emigration schemes pro and con see the Virginia 
newspapers during the summer of 1S65 and early part of 1S66. Enquirer 
editorial March 17, 1866, favors "diffusion of the colored population'' 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 17 

While the people of Virginia thus fully accepted the 
logical results of the war and granted to the negro his per- 
sonal freedom, they were not in 1865 or 1866 prepared to 
extend to him the franchise, to admit him into the jury 
box, to permit him to testify in cases in which white par- 
ties alone were interested, to come into the State from any 
other state or to intermarry with the whites. His rights 
in property were secured to bim by the laws existing prior 
to 1S60, which permitted free negroes to own personal and 
real property. 2 



CHAPTER III. 
The Effect of Emancipation on the Negroes. 

Early in the war negroes began to desert their masters 
and to seek refuge within the Federal lines. With the 
progress of the struggle this movement grew stronger until 
the proper disposal of the fleeing negroes became quite a 
serious problem. From tne first they realized that this 
contest was in a large measure concerning themselves. In 
many a cabin the glad word was whispered that the day 
for the oppressed to '-come up out of Egypt" was at hand. 
Later they heard that the invading hosts of the North were 
coming to greet them as "men and brothers." 3 

throughout the whole country as a solution of the question, as that will 
give Northern people a correct idea of negroes and prevent the blunder of 
equality in the South by Congressional interference. 

2 For the status of free negroes before the war, see Code of 1860; Bal- 
lagh, A History of Slavery in Virginia (passim). 

3 For a full account of negro refugees and the disposal of them by the 
Federal authorities, see (passim) McCarthy, "Lincoln's Plan of Recon- 
struction." 



18 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

Most of the slaves remained at home until the close of 
the war and performed their usual tasks. The old routine 
of the plantation life was on the surface little disturbed. 
They continued to plant and to harvest the crops, to care 
for and protect the wives and children of their masters, 
most of whom were in the Confederate army. From the 
first to the last Virginia was the battleground of the war. 
From first Manassas to Appomattox it felt the mightiest 
shocks of the conflict. The Valley, Northern Virginia and 
the Tidewater were overrun by the contending armies. By 
the attrition of the contest slavery was worn out in these 
parts of the State. Even in these sections most of the 
slaves remained with their masters, but slavery as a vital 
institution was gone. In a large part of the State the 
negroes remained on the farms only because they did not 
know what else to do, not because they did not realize that 
slavery was dead. 4 So effective had been the war, the 
movement of the armies, and the dissemination of hope and 
of opinions favorable to freedom, that in the summer of 
1864 the number of negroes practically free was estimated 
by the North American Eeview at 1,300,000 in the seced- 
ing States. 5 Of this number Virginia had her proportional 
share. Jefferson Davis at the same time placed the num- 
ber of negroes practically free at 3, 000, 000. 6 This agita- 
tion by the year 1865 had shattered the old plantation life; 
its vitality was gone. 

From 1862 to 1865 the stream of negroes deserting 
their families and homes had constantly grown stronger. 
At Washington, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Portsmouth, 
Newport News and Norfolk, they were assembled and fed 
by the Federal Government. This movement was most 
marked in the sections of the State in which the negroes 
had been most frequently brought in contact with the 

4 For the condition of the old plantation life jn the spring and summer 
of 1865, see newspapers of that period. 

5 P. 387, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1864. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 19 

Union armies. In the counties of the Southside, however, 
and in the Southwest, almost every negro remained on his 
master's farm until the close of the war. On the approach 
of the Federal army many whites fled, taking with them 
their slaves; in this way the plantation life was broken up 
and negroes were congregated in certain places. 

At the close of hostilities in Virginia the stream of 
freedmen pouring towards the towns and the military posts 
was swollen to a river. Eichmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg 
and all the larger towns of the State were crowded with 
homeless and penniless negroes. The number of negroes in 
Eichmond in the summer of 1865 was estimated at 30,000, 
which indicated that at least 15,000 strange negroes were in 
the city. Squalid villages of freedmen grew up at the 
various towns along the Chesapeake Bay, at Alexandria, 
at Arlington, and at numerous other points throughout the 
State. Still the movement of the negroes was from the 
country to the city. So serious had the matter become that 
the Federal authorities issued order after order urging the 
freedmen to remain on the farms. At last military orders 
positively forbade negroes to leave the communities where 
they were unless it was absolutely impossible for them to 
find work there. These orders doubtless deterred many 
from moving to the towns. 6 

The increase of the negro population was especially 
marked in the cities held directly by the military authori- 
ties, because the negroes there expected to be fed by Fed- 

6For facts in regard to the movement of the freedmen, see Official 
Records of War of Rebellion, serial 97, pp. 647, 932, 933, 1005, 1086, 1159, 
1185, 1186, 1288, 1296; Richmond Times, July 14, 1865; Charlottesville 
Chronicle, Feb. 28, 1867 ; Waddell, History of Augusta County, pp. 335- 
341; Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, pp. 176, 177; Richmond 
Times, July 14, 1865; Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 7, 1865; Messages and 
Documents of the U. B. Government, 1866-1867, p. 668; Col. O. Brown's 
report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866; Order of Col. J. 8 haw, Jr., 
Richmond Times, Aug. 8, 1865; Gen. Gregg's General Order No. 15, 
Lynchburg Virginian, June 1, 1865; Daily Enquirer, March 22, 1866, April 
18, 1867 ; Republic, Aug. 10, 1865. 



20 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

eral quartermasters or agents of the Freed men's Bureau. 
Many of them doubtless felt that their newly found freedom 
was too good to be true, and were fearful that they should 
again be remanded to slavery, unless protected by the 
agents of the United States Government, which they felt 
had secured for them the liberty which they enjoyed. 
Many of all classes were drawn away from their old homes 
and trades to the idleness and vice of the cities, yet most of 
the deserters were able-bodied young negroes who left their 
old, young and helpless behind as a burden on their former 
owners. In their new places of abode they were very 
ready to forget their wives whom chey had left behind and 
contract new matrimonial obligations without much appre- 
ciation of the sanctity of this relation. The negro women 
especially, freed from the discipline of the old life, often 
became very dissolute. 7 

In some cases the former owners were expected to care 
for the helpless freedmen. The Federal authorities, how- 
ever, usually recognized that the burden of supporting 
dependent negroes was no longer properly chargeable to 
their former owners, but had been shifted to the relatives 
of the paupers, to the community, or to the Fedeial Gov- 
ernment. It must be said, however, that many of these 
deserted unfortunates were cheerfully supported by their 
old masters on account of affection and humanity. 8 

A great restlessness to get off the farms where they 
had been held as slaves seized almost all negroes every- 
where, but some faithful slaves refused to leave their old 
homes and continued to live with their formei masters and 
serve them till death. 

7 For effect of emancipation on the marriage relations and morals of 
the negroes, see Ruffin, The Negro as a Political and Social Factor, (pas- 
sim) ; Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, chap. II; Gen. Hal- 
leck's report, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, serial 97, p. 1296. 

SRichmond Times, July 7, 1865 ; General Order No. 13, Lynchburg Vir- 
ginian, June 2, 1865; Official Records of War of Rebellion, serial 97, pp, 
932, 933. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 21 

It was estimated, in July, 1865, that at least 50,000 
able-bodied negroes had deserted their helpless ones and 
gone to the cities of Virginia or the North. Not only had 
able-bodied negroes nocked to the towns and military posts, 
but many helpless old men, women and children were hud- 
dled together in wretched hovels. In some instances thirty 
negroes were, in the summer of 1865, occupying the rooms 
formerly considered barely comfortable for two. In filthy 
improvised huts around the various military posts and in 
the freedmen's towns the mortality of the negroes was 
appalling. 9 

It was felt by some of the Federal army officers that 
there was danger of ' 'the land going to waste' ' on account 
of the desertion of the laboring population. They pro- 
posed to treat as "vagabonds" the freedmen who were 
away from their old homes and without employment. 
Prior to the war it had been claimed that the effects of 
freedom on the free negroes in Virginia had been disas- 
trous, "the successive censuses, particularly from 1840 to 
I860, showing a great physical and moral deterioration on 
the part of the free blacks whether compared with the 



9 Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1865 ; Richmond Times, June 27, July 
3, 7, 1865 ; Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-7, p. 668, 
1868-9, p. 508; Official Records of War of Rebellion, p. 1215, serial 97; 
American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865, p. 376. 

The Whig, Oct. 2, 1866, refers to a "hallucination" amongst the 
negroes that the great mortality amongst them was not due to disease 
but poison. In the Tidewater region they were living largely on melons, 
stale fish and cabbage but believed in many places that the white people 
had "tricked" them. They were treated by quack negro doctors with 
decoctions of herbs, etc. They would not trust white doctors. Nov. 5, 
1866, the same newspaper declares that the number of negroes was great- 
ly diminished. In the Enquirer, Nov. 15, 1865, it is claimed that fifty per 
cent, of the negroes had perished from disease. The mortality of the 
negroes was not as great as it was believed to be at the time. 

°See orders regarding negroes, Official Records of the War of Rebel- 
lion, serial 97, pp. 1005, 1086, 1173, 1291 ; Order of Gen. Gregg, published in 
Lynchburg Virginian, June 1, 1865. 



22 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

slaves or with the whites." 1 In 1865 the negroes seemed to 
be rapidly becoming a race of vagrants and idlers. Ne- 
groes possess a remarkably strong and persistent local at- 
tachment; yet they were so anxious to assert their liberty 
and to convince themselves that they were really free, that 
they felt in most cases that it was necessary to desert the 
farms where they had been held as slaves and to seek homes 
with some neighboring farmer, even if they did not have 
the courage or think it necessary to leave the entire com- 
munity. Many of the largest farms were almost depopu- 
lated of their former negroes, and their places were filled 
either by those who had come in from a distance or from 
the neighboring plantations.' 2 Fidelity and timidity in- 
fluenced some to remain with their former masters but 
their number was not large. A vast majority of the 
negroes changed their habitations immediately after the 
war or within the next three years. 

In their new homes they frequently were not able to 
find, even when they wished it, the forms of labor to which 
they had been trained. As has been mentioned before, the 
plantations were little industrial communities in which the 
division of labor system was necessarily adopted to a con- 
siderable extent. Some of the slaves were house servants 
and personal attendants of their masters; others were 
taught to spin and weave; others were blacksmiths, har- 
ness makers and carpenters; the great body of the slaves 
were mere field hands. When the old plantation life was 
broken up these freedmen were very poorly prepared for 
the new society in which they must compete with the white 
mechanics and laborers who had been trained in more lines 
of work as well as to a higher degree of skill in the mechan- 
ical trades. By these white competitors their employment 
was rendered more difficult and uncertain. This had a 

Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168. 

2 Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, chap. XII. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 23 

tendency still further to demoralize the negroes and force 
them to drift from place to place. It is needless to say 
that most plantation negroes found themselves out of place 
in the cities, where there was not a great demand for such 
a large body of absolutely unskilled laborers as flocked to 
them in 1865 and I860. 3 



CHAPTEE IV. 
Disturbing Forces. 

During the two years from the spring of 1865 to the 
passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March, 1867, the 
negroes fell largely under the influence of their preachers 
and a class of native whites who acted as leaders and ad- 
visers to the freedmen. The so-called "scalawags," in 
many instances, had been known for their cruelty and in- 
justice to the negroes. Many of them had been slave over- 
seers, some of them slave owners before the war; yet this 
reputation did not appear to be any obstacle to their win- 
ning the confidence of the freedmen. 4 By artful insinua- 
tion they won the favor of the colored people, and in a 
large degree succeeded in alienating them from their old 
friends and masters. The motives of this class were entire- 
ly selfish and their influence wholly disorganizing and de- 
moralizing at a time when society, revolutionized by the 



3 See the newspapers of that period for the demoralized state of labor. 

*It was alleged that Rev. Mr. HuDnicut, the most influential "scala- 
wag' in the early Reconstruction days, had been cruel to slaves before 
the war. 



24 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

events of the war and by emancipation, called for co-oper- 
ation and confidence in all classes. 

Another class, numerically very small, was made up 
of whites who had come to the State as agents of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, teachers or adventurers. 5 The mo- 
tives of almost all the teachers and of many of the Bureau 
agents were unselfish; yet their presence and the ideas most 
of them entertained in regard to the place of the negro dis- 
posed most of the blacks to become dissatisfied with th^ 
position as mere "free negroes." 

Many of the teachers had come from the original abo- 
lition homes of the North and were thoroughly indoctri- 
nated with the idea of the equality of all men. Th*v 
called on the negroes and extended to them other soc * 
courtesies that shocked the whites and encouraged the 
freedmen to demand equal privileges from all the whites; 
but it is untrue that they favored "miscegenation" except 
in rare instances. Most of them were pure and self-deny- 
ing women who looked upon their work as a call from God 
and regarded all human beings as entitled to equal rights 
before the law and in society. Yet, despite the best of in- 
tentions, the teachers by their radical ideas did much to 
create and foster in the freedmen an aversion to taking up 
their old familiar labor with the shovel and the hoe. They 
preferred to speculate about their abstract rights rather 
than to avail themselves of the privileges actually before 
them. 6 

The Freedmen's Court, consisting of three judges, one 
representing the whites; the second, the blacks; the third, 
the United States Government, did much to keep the ne- 
groes agitated and expectant. Many of these courts gave a 

5 For baneful influence of clerical adventurers and radicals, see Whig, 
Sept. 6, Sept. 12, 1866, Feb. 4, May 11, 1867; Dispatch, May 13, 1867; Docu- 
mentary History of Reconstruction (passim), edited by W. L. Fleming. 

fiAbout this time the negroes began to talk a great deal of their desire 
to be "treated as a man and a brother." 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 25 

ready ear to all the complaints of the negroes, however 
worthless. On the information of mere negro children 
aged and respectable citizens were notified to appear before 
these courts to answer for the most trivial offeuses. The 
records of these courts show many surprising verdicts. 
The court at Lynchburg ordered the defendant to pay a 
colored freed woman one dollar and fifty cents for "cross 
and unjust conduct." 7 It was reported by Gen. Fullerton 
who had been sent by President Johnson on a tour of in- 
spection throughout the South, that in Virginia "these 
agents take the widest latitude in the exercise of their judi- 
cial functions, trying questions involving title to real es- 
tate, contracts, crimes and even actions affecting the mar- 
ital relations. We witnessed the trial of a divorce case be- 
, fore the sub-agent at Charlottesville. The trial occupied 
about ten minutes and resulted in a decree of divorce. 
In many places where the agents are not men of capacity 
and integrity a very unsatisfactory condition of affairs pre- 
vails. This originates in the arbitrary, unnecessary and 
offensive interference of the agents of the Bureau with the 
relation between planters and their hired freedmen, causing 
vexatious delays in the prosecution of labor, and imposing 
expenses and costs in suits before themselves about trivial 
matters. The effects produced by the actions of this class 
of agents is bitterness and antagonism between the whites 
and the freedmen and expectations on the part of the freed- 
men that can never be realized." 8 

The friends of the Bureau strenuously insisted that the 
Bureau courts were absolutely necessary to secure anything 
like justice for the negroes; that the antagonism between 
the whites and the blacks was not the result of the presence 
of the Bureau agents; and that the disturbed state of socie- 
ty existed, not because of the Bureau, but in spite of it. 

"Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 

8Pp. 64-66, House Document No. 120, 1st Ses. 39th Congress. 



26 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

The object of the Bureau was to protect the interests 
of the colored people in the courts, in contracts and in 
every relation of life. 9 Doubtless it did accomplish its 
purpose, in part, at least; yet the Bureau had a tendency 
to prolong the period of transition from slavery to freedom 
by keeping the negroes in a state of excitement, since they 
looked upon the Bureau as a visible demonstration of the 
power and purpose of the United States Government from 
which they had already received their freedom, and from 
which they were led by many agents of the Bureau to be- 
lieve that they had not yet received half of the good things 

9 Compare the mild Freedmen's Bureau Bill of March 3, 1865, (p. 141, 
App. Congressional Globe, 1864-1865) , with the drastic Bureau Bill of July 
16, 1S66, (pp. 366-367, App. Congressional Globe, 1865, 1866). 

Negro refugees nocked to the Union army during the war. Some of 
them were put to work on forts and fortifications, others were concen- 
trated in camps and colonies under army officers, usually chaplains. The 
Freedmen's Bureau, with Gen. O. O. Howard at its head, was put in con- 
trol of all negroes. The Bureau was practically independent of the mili- 
tary and civil governments in the South. 

"Its principal legal activities were relief work, education, regulation 
of labor, and the administration of justice." * * * * "It regulated 
contracts, wages, hours, rations, clothing and quarters." * * * * In 
all that related to labor the Bureau was supreme. "The Bureau courts 
had jurisdiction over all cases that arose between blacks or between 
blacks and whites." It "supervised the civil courts, from which cases 
relating to negroes were often removed and the decisions of which were 
set aside." * * * * 

"The income of the Bureau was derived from the sale of confiscated 
Confederate and private property, from fees, rents, taxes, county funds, 
gifts from individuals and associations, and from appropriations by Con- 
gress. * * * * In the great majority of the black communities there 
was, at the end of the war, no destitution and had the negroes stayed 
at home and worked there would have been little want, but the distribu- 
tion of rations caused them to crowd into the towns, and much suffering 
and disease resulted. In the later years of the Bureau rations were used 
simply as a means of organizing a black political party. The labor regu- 
lations were as a rule good in theory but absurd in practice. * * * * 
The education given the negro was not suited to his needs and the doc- 
trines of social and political equality taught in some of the schools 
aroused the opposition of the whites. The negroes as often as the whites 
were cheated and blackmailed by the agents of the Bureau." Fleming, 
Documents Relating to Reconstruction. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 27 

in store for them. This feeling rendered many negroes un- 
willing to labor. They preferred to do as little work as 
possible and to wait for the abasement of the whites and 
their own exaltation. 

The number of white adventurers in Virginia from 
1865 to 1867 was not large. In fact, this class was never 
numerous in Virginia. From the close of the war to the 
passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March, 1867, a con- 
siderable number of white people, it is impossible to de- 
termine how many, had come to Virginia in an unofficial 
capacity. Some of these had come to cast in their fortunes 
with the State and to assist in its development. Others 
had come as mere adventurers hoping to profit by the pros- 
tration and the disorganization of society without render- 
ing any equivalent. This last class found the negroes the 
readiest road to influence and to wealth. They dissemi- 
nated amongst the credulous blacks alluring reports of 
what was being done for them in the "North. 

The Union League, a secret society in the interest of 
the Republican party, was organized throughout the State 
in 1866. l Its purpose was to attach the negroes firmly to 



The "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" were not so influential in 1865 
and 1866 as they were after the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in 
March, 1867. The character and influence of the "scalawags" and "car- 
petbaggers" are faithfully portrayed in Thomas Nelson Page's novel,"Red 
Rock." 

lit is perhaps impossible to determine when Leagues were first organ- 
ized in Virginia. It was probably as early as 1865. The League was gen- 
erally organized throughout the State in the fall and winter of 1866 and 
the spring of 1867. It was organized in Ohio in 1862. After the war the 
League favored negro suffrage and radical measures in the South. The 
Philadelphia League sent out more than 4,000,000 pamphlets in three 
years after the war. The publications of the League largely consisted in 
stories of outrages upon freedmen in the South. It sent teachers to the 
South and strove to promote the interests of the freedmen. The League 
was originally composed of whites. About the time the negroes were en- 
franchised by Congressional acts negroes were admitted in large num- 
bers. Thereupon most of the whites withdrew leaving the control of the 
organization to the "scalawags," "carpetbaggers" and the negro leaders. 



28 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

the Eepublican party and to the organizers of the League. 
It was made up of negroes, "scalawags" aud "carpetbag- 
gers." It had a large number of offices to which the col- 
ored members eagerly aspired. It held nocturnal meetings 
in which the colored people were urged to "stand by the 
Union," which they understood as meaning to stand by the 
Eepublican party and to oppose the great mass of whites 
in the community. The leaders of these meetings were 
the negro preachers, the "scalawags" and an occasional 
"carpetbagger." The appointment of the Committee on 
Beconstruction, the Congressional discussion of the Freed- 
men's Bureau Bill, the Civil Eights Bill and other matters 
touching the negroes gave an ever-quickening interest in 
the political discussions of the League. 2 

At this time the colored clergy became in a large de- 
gree the political leaders of their people. 3 They were sent 
as delegates to the numerous conventions called by the 
negroes or "scalawags." 4 They were the chief speakers on 
all occasions. They wrote letters to the newspapers in the 
State and in the North, urging their claims aud declaring 
their grievances. They wished negroes to be admitted to 

Every negro was considered a member by virtue of his color. At the 
weekly meetings generally held in negro churches and school houses inflam- 
matory speeches promising confiscation of property and social equality 
were made by white and black leaders. The W hig calls the Leagues "only 
mischief hatching concerns and nuisances." This was the general opin- 
ion of the majority of the whites. 

^The facts above in regard to the object of the League, its officers and 
its methods were obtained from colored men who were members of the 
League. For Constitution and Ritual of the League, see Union League 
Documents, edited by W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia. 

3 The great body of the negroes were unable to read the newspapers. 
They derived about all their information from the public speakers ; most 
of these orators were negro preachers. See Ruffin, The Negro as a Social 
and Political Factor. 

4 In a convention of Freedmen at Alexandria, Aug. 2, 1865, the preach- 
ers were present in great numbers. One of them said: "I look on this 
convention as the brains of Virginia."— The Republic, Aug. 4, 1865. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 29 

the State University on the same terms as whites; they in- 
sisted on being called "Mister;" they soon declared that 
nothing short of absolute equality with the whites in all 
things would satisfy them. 5 The League, the negro 
preachers, and the "scalawags" had prepared the minds of 
the blacks for the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. After the 
passage of these bills these adventurers seized control of 
the State for several years. 

The aforesaid disturbing forces and the undetermined 
status of the freedmen kept the negroes agitated, the labor 
supply uncertain, and labor contracts insecure. Conse- 
quently the freedmen were dissatisfied and restless; indus- 
try was languishing; vagrancy was prevalent; colored chil- 
dren were unprovided for, many of the youth of the land 
were growing up io idleness and crime. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Evolution of a System of Hired Labor. 

The emancipation of the slaves broke up the old indus- 
tries in a large part of Virginia. For more than two hun- 
dred years the people in the oldest and most populous 
parts of the State had been accustomed to slave labor with 
all its attendant circumstances and consequences. Many of 
the people had little or no knowledge of free labor and how 
to deal with it. They had little hope that their former 

5 A convention composed of 160 negroes and 50 whites met in Rich- 
mond April 17, 1867. One of the resolutions of this convention made 
great promises to poor laboring white men, in order to win their support 
against the "rapacious and arrogant" as they styled the whites of the 
State. P. 758, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867. 



30 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

slaves would serve them faithfully or efficiently for wages. 
It has already beeu shown how the negroes, excited and 
agitated by their sudden liberty, were leaving the old plan- 
tation. 

The Freedmen's Bureau, in the spring and summer of 
1865, was being organized throughout the State to look af- 
ter the interests of the colored people. Federal soldiers 
were posted at all the prominent points in the State. 6 It 
was an additional source of weakness and embarrassment 
that the State government at Richmond had fallen with the 
Confederacy in the spring of 1865. The ' 'restored govern- 
ment" of Virginia at Alexandria and later at Richmond 
was without much respect or popular support. The 
county governments were therefore unable to take vigorous 
measures either in punishing vagrancy and crime or in re- 
organizing the community. All initiative in restoring 
society to its normal estate was discouraged if not positive- 
ly prohibited. The white people were kept in suspense in 
regard to the future policy of the Federal Government. 
The Civil Rights Bill and Negro Suffrage were beginning to 
be discussed by some of the leaders of Northern public 
opinion. 

The outlook was gloomy. Something had to be done 
at once, or famine would soon stalk through the land. 
The planting season was far advanced in Virginia when 
hostilities closed in the spring of 1865. Light crops were 
planted, but it seemed that it was going to be impossible to 
have them cultivated or harvested for lack of laborers in 
many parts of the State where the negroes were the chief 
farm hands. 

Many of the planters at once agreed to give the negroes 
board and a share in the crops that they had already helped 
to plant, on the condition that they continue on the farms 
and assist in cultivating and harvesting them. Not a few 

6 Soldiers were posted at ten points in May, 1866. House Document 
No. 120, 1st Ses. 39th Congress. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 31 

freedmen accepted these terms. This plan seems to have 
met the approbation of the most prudent of the military 
commanders, and orders were issued from time to time 
urging the planters to adopt such a policy and the negroes 
to accept such terms. The negroes accepting these terms 
left their old masters and homes about the middle of the 
winter of 1865-66, when they had received their share of 
the crop, which they generally felt was too small. 

The farmers of Virginia feared that the negroes as 
freedmen could never be induced to become faithful and 
regular laborers. In 1865 it seemed that a large number, if 
not nearly all of them, would soon become worthless and 
possibly as turbulent as the free negroes of the West Indies. 
In reality, emancipation was attended by less permanent 
idleness and disorganization of labor than was expected, 
because the discipline and habits of labor which slavery 
had taught the negro came to his relief when he later 
found that he had to work or starve. The climatic condi- 
tions of Virginia rendered it impossible for them to become 
permanent idlers and live as they could, and probably 
would have lived had they been favored by a tropical 
climate and easy conditions of life such as Hayti affords. 
However that may be, when the alternative of work or 
starvation was squarely presented, most of them chose 

work. 7 

Perhaps it is easy to exaggerate the actual disorganiza- 
tion of labor that really did take place in 1865. The 
strangeness of the situation demoralized the whites quite 
as much as the blacks. As has already been said, the 
planters in a large part of the State were unfamiliar with 
free common labor, its dignity and its employment. 8 At 
the same time the late slaves had much to learn of their 



truce's Plantation Negro as a Freeman, discusses (passim) the ef- 
fect of emancipation on the industry of the negroes. 

sit was the opinion of Col. O. Brown and other Bureau agents that 
this unf amiliarity with free labor greatly increased the difficulties of 



32 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

true position, their rights and duties as free laborers. 
These conditions rendered the solution of the problems of 
1865-66 still more difficult, 

So despondent were many in regard to the negro as a 
free laborer that they thought it would be necessary to call in 
white laborers to take his place. White immigrants were 
earnestly sought; immigration societies were formed 
throughout the State; numerous enterprises encouraging 
white immigration were chartered by the Legislature during 
the session of 1865- 66 ; 9 a State Commissioner of Immigra- 
tion was appointed. It was openly avowed that it was 
their purpose to induce white men to come to Virginia 
from England, Scotland, Germany, Poland or any other 
European country to take the place of the colored laborers. 
This was not through any hostility to the negro as a man 
or as a laborer, for the Virginians have always preferred 
the colored laborer to any other; but it arose from a belief 
that the freedman could not be induced to work. In the 
State Farmers' Convention held in Eichmond in November, 
1866, to discuss the labor situation, it was declared that it 
was "impracticable to depend on the present labor sup- 
ply;" that white labor was cheaper at high wages than 
colored labor at lower wages. Still it was felt by the Con- 
vention that the number of whites that could be induced to 
come to Virginia would be very inadequate to the demand. 



emancipation. See Col. Brown's report in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2 
1866. 

For opinion of the freedmen as free laborers, see Whig, Jan. 3, 1866; 
Jan. 10, 1866; Feb. 19, 1866; April 16, 1866; Sept. 11, 1866; Enquirer, Nov. 
1. 1865; Nov. 2, 1865; Nov. 5, 1S65; Nov. 17, 1865; June 22, 1866; Dispatch, 
July 8, 1867. General Howard expresses confidence that the negro free 
laborer will be successful and insists that the right of negroes to rent or 
buy land shall be guaranteed to them. He also thinks that joint stock 
companies to help poor blacks should be formed. Enquirer, Dec. 22, 1865. 

9Acts 1865-66, pp. 234-236, 287, 288, 289. 290, 293, 296-298. Richmond 
Times, Aug. 3, 1865; Whig, Nov. 8, 1866; Enquirer, July 11, 1866. 

n Lynchburg Virginian, Nov. 24, 1866. 



Negroes and Jheir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-67 33 

The number of white immigrants to Virginia during the 
period from 1865 to 1867 was inconsiderable. Most of 
those who did come to the State did not come as laborers 
but rather as capitalists or "carpetbaggers." It was clear 
to most people from the first that the negroes would in a 
large part of the State continue to be the chief laborers for 
many years and that some plan of utilizing their labor had 
to be devised. 

Various plans were, during the summer of 1865, pro- 
posed by the whites for the employment of the negroes. 
The Freedmen's Bureau had declined to fix a wage, but 
thought it best to leave the rate of wages to the law of sup- 
ply and demand. 1 The aim of the Bureau was simply to 
secure freedom of contract for the freedmen and to enforce 
the contracts when made. 

One attempted solution of this question was for the 
farmers to hold county or district meetings to determine 
the rate of wages they would pay the negroes. These 
meetings were held in many of the counties where the 
negroes were numerous. The wage agreed upon was usu- 
ally $5.00 per month and board for able-bodied men, and 
$3.00 per month and board for women and boys. 2 The 
farmers, in some instances, agreed in these county meetings 
not to employ negroes at any price unless they were able 
to furnish testimonials or recommendations from their last 
employer, which practically meant that a negro could not 
find employment unless he had the endorsement of his 
former owner. 3 



•Gen Howard's report, p. 644, Messages and Documents of U. S. Gov- 
ernment, 1866-67. 

2RichmoDd Times, June 15, 1865, June 20, 1865; Col. O. Brown's re- 
port, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. Pp. 517, 908, Globe, 1865-66, 
gives an account of a meeting of Hanover county farmers. General 
Young's report, p. 1158, serial No. 97, Official Records of the War of the 
Rebellion, also Carl Schurz's opinion, p. 1305; Globe, 1865-66; The Repub- 
lic, May 19, 1865, June 3, 1865; Whig, Sept. 18, 1866. 

3 See Richmond Times, June 20, 1865, for account of such a meeting 
and resolutions in Dinwiddie county. Col. Brown's report, Lynchburg 
Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 

3 



34 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

Small as these wages seem, it does not appear that 
they were unsatisfactory to the negroes in some of the 
counties where they had been agreed upon. Indeed in 
some parts of the State the freedmen were glad enough to 
work for their board, at this time. 4 In other counties the 
demand for colored laborers was rather active at $12.00 per 
month. 5 

July 24, 1865, the Franklin county farmers in a meet- 
ing declared: "Whilst we recognize the propriety and 
necessity of giving employment to the negroes and of en- 
couraging them to industry and good conduct by fair and 
reasonable rewards for their labor, still, in consequence of 
the many difficulties surrounding the subject, we deem it 
wholly impracticable at this time to fix any regular stand- 
ard of wages for labor — each case must necessarily be gov- 
erned by the circumstances attending it, and in the present 
unsettled and prostrated condition of the finances and busi- 
ness of the country, laborers must be content with moderate 
wages or go without employment." 6 

The small wage fund and the uncertainty of the times 
in many parts of Virginia in 1864 and 1866 undoubtedly 
rendered liberal wages impossible. Col. Brown, Assistant 
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, said 
on this subject: "Stripped to a great extent of ready 
resources by the operations of the war they were unable to 
allow those people (the negroes) their just due, much less 
charitable assistance." 7 Elsewhere he explained the low 



4 Richmond Times, June 27, 1865, said such was the case in Orange, 
Culpeper and Fauquier counties. See Peyton's History of Augusta 
County, p. 240. 

5 In the Valley counties the demand for laborers at $12 per month as 
farm hands exceeded the supply. House Document No. 120, 1st Ses. 39th 
Congress. 

fi Lynchburg Virginian, July 24, 1865. See Whig, Aug. 18, 1865, for 
account of such meetings. 

^Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866; Agricultural Report, 1865-66, 
pp. 135-136. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 35 

wages prevailing in Virginia as the result of an excessive 
supply of laborers with a small demand. He suggested as 
the only solution, the emigration of at least 50,000 negroes 
from the State. 8 It is asserted that the wages paid un- 
skilled white and black laborers were practically the same 
at that time and the low wage paid the negroes was in no 
sense an effort to wrong them or to discriminate against 
them. Nevertheless it was generally felt by the negroes 
and by the Federal officers that the purpose of these 
county meetings was inimical to the interests of the colored 
laborers. The military officers generally disapproved the 
proceedings of these farmer meetings on the ground that 
"the citizens will not be permitted to band themselves 
together for the purpose of agreeing on any certain remun- 
eration for the labor of the freedmen, that being in the 
hands of the Freedmen' s Bureau— the officers of which 
alone will decide in these matters." 9 It has already been 
mentioned that the Bureau always declined to fix a wage, 
but strove to secure for the contracting negro such wages 
as "supply and demand would insure." 

In one county at least a meeting of farmers, besides 
fixing the wage at $5.00 per month, resolved that no land 
should be rented to negroes. These meetings and resolu- 
tions of the planters were regarded by many friends of the 
negroes as efforts to keep the colored people a landless and 
moneyless class whose condition was, in reality, worse than 
the old form of chattel slavery from which they had just 
emerged, while it secured to the whites the benefits of 
slavery without its inconveniences. It is doubtless true 
that a considerable number of people had consciously or 



*Col. O. Brown's report for 1865, printed in Lynchburg Virginian, 
Jan. 2, 1866 

»District Commander's General Order printed in Lynchburg Virgin- 
ian, July 27, 1865. 

"Such was the case in Amherst County. Richmond Times, June 15, 
1865; Col. Brown's report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 



36 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

unconsciously such an object in view. Many of the people 
felt that the negro was hopelessly servile by nature; that 
all efforts to elevate him must prove futile. Entertaining 
such opinions, they were ready to assent to a system of 
wages that would keep him in the place in society to 
which he was, in their opinion, suited. Yet almost all 
people frankly and fully accepted the unconditional 
abolition of slavery and wished to devise some system of 
labor and contract that would secure the rights of both 
whites and blacks. Some of the newspapers condemned 
the efforts of the planters to fix wages at $5.00 per month, 
declaring that such wages were not sufficient to support 
the laborers. 1 

Notwithstanding the idleness and vagrancy of the 
uegroes duriug the years 1865 and 1866 it was hoped by 
many that they would settle down to something like their 
old industry when the novelty of their condition wore off 
and they found themselves face to face with the stern reali- 
ties a free man must meet and conquer, or perish. How to 
put the negroes to work in this transitional period and 
thus prevent a great scarcity of food, if not a famine, was 
the question that had to be solved. 

Many things disinclined the negroes earnestly to go to 
work on the farms at their old occupations. In the minds 
\ of most of them freedom and idleness were synonymous. 
Labor was a badge of servitude. If they must work, they 
did not wish to resume their old forms of agricultural 
labor; they preferred light and transient jobs about the 
towns, and in this way eked out a wretched support. 2 

The army officers stationed in Virginia during this 
period uniformly strove to impress the colored people with 
the true nature of freedom, and informed them that it 

^Lynchburg Virginian, Dec. 30, 1865, June 12, 1865; Richmond Times, 
Aug. 3, May 19, 1865. 

2 For idleness of negroes and their aversion to farm labor, see news- 
papers of 1865-66. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 37 

would be necessary for them to work as hard, if not harder, 
than when they were slaves. Eepeatedly these officers 
issued orders urging them to find work where they were 
needed and not to hope vain things from freedom. They 
were urged to go to work on the "abandoned" lands then 
in the hands of the officers of the Federal Government. 3 
On the peninsula between Fortress Monroe and Williams- 
burg, it is said, sixteen thousand negroes were occupying 
lands that the United States Government had seized. 4 At 
various points throughout the State county farms were 
established for them where they were furnished food until 
they could raise a crop. Some of the army officers sug- 
gested that the army mules should be loaned or given to 
the negroes to enable them to go to work and support 
themselves. 

These attempts in 1865 and 1866 to find homes and 
employment on the "confiscated" land were frustrated by 
the gradual restoration of these lands to their former own- 
ers. While they were in possession of these lands the 
freedmen were not very successful. The uncertainty of 
their tenure conduced to the failure of these settlements. 
The officers of the government divided some of these con- 
fiscated lands, of which the titles had been perfected by 
judical process, into small lots of ten acres or less and sold 
them to freedmen on easy terms. But all these efforts to 



3 See the following references in regard to the plans of the army offi- 
cers to put the negroes to work and to settle them on the abandoned 
lands: Gen. Howard's report, p. 644, Messages and Documents of the U. 
S. Government, 1866-67; Gen. Halleck thought the 100,000 negroes under 
the direction of the Federal Government in Virginia should be given the 
use of condemned animals to raise crops, p. 1133, serial 97, Official Records 
of War of Rebellion; Gen. McKibbin's report, p. 1159, serial 97, Official 
Records of War of Rebellion; Gen. Hartsuff's Order, pp. 932-933. 1185, 
Official Records of War of Rebellion, serial 97; Messages and Documents 
of U. 8. Government, 1868-69, pp. 508-509; Messages and Documents of U. 
S. Government, 1866-67, p. 668; Gen. Halleck, 1296, 1005, serial 97, Official 
Records of War of Rebellion ; Charlottesville Chronicle, Feb. 28, 1867. 

«P. 658, Globe. 1865-66. The number was probably not so great. 



38 Negroes and Their Ireatmen n Virginia, 1865-6? 

secure homes for the negroes reached only a very small 
number of the hundreds of thousands of restless and unem- 
ployed colored people of the State. 

There was a more or less well defined hope in the 
bosom of all the negroes that there were other and better 
things to come to them. About Christmas each year the 
report was spread abroad amongst the credulous colored 
people that they were soon to be given the farms of their 
former masters. 5 This expectation was strong during the 
autumn and early winter of 1865. Very naturally these 
expectant landlords did not wish to enter into any perma- 
nent contract as laborers. 

The great body of the negroes in Virginia was engaged 
in the cultivation of tobacco. This crop requires regular 
and careful attention from the time it is planted until it is 
ready for the warehouse, a period of from ten to twelve 



5P. 79, App. Globe, 1865-66. 

"Reports having been received at these headquarters that the f reed- 
men in some parts of the State refuse to enter into just and reasonable 
contracts for labor, on account of the belief that the United States gov- 
ernment will distribute lands among them, superintendents and agents 
of this bureau will take the earliest opportunity to explain to the freed- 
men that no lands will be given them by the government; that the govern- 
ment has but a very small quantity of land in the State-only enough 
to provide homes for a few families, and that this can only be secured by 
purchase or lease. They will also explain to them the advantages of at 
once entering into contracts for labor for the coming year, and that the 
system of contracts is in no way connected with slavery, but is the sys- 
tem adopted by free laborers everywhere. It is believed that the renting 
of small tracts of land by the farmer to his laborers would be mutually 
beneficial. The laborer's interest in his crops and improvements would 
attach him to the plantation, counteract any temptation to break his 
contract, and by furuishing employment for the more dependent mem- 
bers of his family, increase their contentment and their comforts. 

"The plan of renting lands on shares to the freedmen has been suc- 
cessfully tried in some parts of the State, and is believed to be worthy of 
a more extended trial. Superintendents will counsel with and assist 
both parties in making either of the above arrangements." Instructions 
to agents in Virginia, issued Sept. 19, 1865, by Col. O. Brown, Assistant 
Commissioner of Freedmen's Bureau, printed in Documents Relating to 
Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming, University West Virginia. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 39 

months. Through spring, summer, and autumn it must 
have daily care. Probably no other great agricultural 
product in the United States requires such assiduous care 
for so long a period. No planter therefore could venture 
to plant a tobacco crop unless there was a strong probabili- 
ty that his laborers would remain with him through the 
year. The labor supply was very unsatisfactory during the 
season of 1865, and promised to be so for 1866, owing to 
the disinclination of the negroes to form long contracts or 
to respect them when formed. The issue of rations by the 
Freedmen's Bureau to the negroes made it possible for 
many of them to live in idleness and was a standing invita- 
tion to them to flock to various agencies and to find sup- 
port without work, while waiting for the good the future 
was to bring. 

With these difficulties confronting them the people set 
to work to develop a contract system of labor that would 
be fair to all. The attempt on the part of certain counties 
to fix a general rate of wages was a failure both from its 
inherent weakness and from the opposition of the Federal 
authorities. Duiing the summer of 1865 various plans 
were proposed and to some extent put into operation. 
One of these plans was to furnish the negroes cabins, some 
land for a garden and for a small crop, with the under- 
standing that the negroes were to work at a stipulated 
wage for the owner of the land when their services were 
needed. This system proved fairly satifactory to both the 
whites and the blacks. There continued, however, to be 
considerable complaint on the part of the whites that the 
labor was not reliable and that the negroes did not respect 
the obligation of their contracts. 6 

The number of negroes cultivating rented farms on 
their own account was not large during the years 1865-67. 



6For form of contract with freedmen, see Whig, Dec. 25, 1865. For 
violation of contract, Whig, Nov. 3, 1866. Complaints of violated con- 
tracts is common in the newspapers of that time. 



40 Negroes and Their Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

For this there were several causes. The chief of these was 
that the negroes had not sufficient capital to furnish them- 
selves with food while making the crop, even if the land 
owner furnished the land, the tools and the work stock. 
In most cases it was necessary for the landlord not only to 
furnish land, stock and tools but also to advance a suffi- 
cient sum in cash or credit to buy food for the negro and 
his family while making the crop. This involved a consid- 
erable outlay of money as well as considerable risk as the 
negroes did not prove highly successful farmers and were 
usually dissatisfied with the settlement of the account at 
the end of the year. Another explanation of the compara- 
tively small number of renters is that the whites felt that 
negro labor without the direction and guidance of white 
men would be a failure. 7 It has already been mentioned 
that in one county of the State it was resolved not to rent 
land to negroes. 8 Such a feeling, however, was never very 
general, and where it did exist it arose chiefly from the 
considerations just mentioned and not from any desire to 
oppress the negroes. There was no effort by law or general 
public opinion to prevent the freedmen from renting or 
owning land, though some few people thought it best not to 
rent them land. 

Free negroes were allowed to own land before the war. 
At the close of the war, in 1865, a considerable number of 
negroes in Virginia had bought real estate. 9 They were 
very anxious to own land, since they thought that owner- 
ship of the soil was an indisputable mark of freedom. The 
number buying land in the three years immediately follow- 

7 For reasons why farmers prefer to hire negroes rather than rent 
them land, see Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, p. 212 et seq. 

8 Amherst County Resolutions, Richmond Times, June 15, 1865. The 
Enquirer (editorial) suggests that the freedmen might become fixtures 
on the plantations. This is suggested as a solution of the vexed labor 
question. 

9 Col. O. Brown's Report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 41 

ing the war was many times larger than for any three 
years since 1868. It does not appear that any negro ex- 
perienced any difficulty in buying real estate either in the 
country or in the city if he had sufficient means to do so. 

Neither the whites nor the negroes found it entirely 
satisfactory for the negroes to attempt to rent land and 
faim on their own account. By the close of 1866 the pre- 
vailing opinion amongst the farmers of the State was in- 
clined to favor the wage system instead of renting the land 
to the freedmen. Eepresentative planters declared the 
results of renting was anything but satisfactory. "The 
stock loaned was greatly depreciated in value and not 
enough was made to remunerate the land owner for ad- 
vances. The negroes as tenants are worthless." 

A few planters took a little more hopeful view of their 
colored tenants. By this time the negroes as a race had 
demonstrated their incapacity for independent enterprise 
and the direction of their own labor; yet many of them who 
were especially endowed by nature or had enjoyed superior 
advantages in slavery were successful and respected men of 
business. 

A wage system was being developed during the years 
1866 and 1866. It is difficult to determine what was the 
average rate of wages actually paid freedmen in the sum- 
mer and fall of 1865. The conditions prevailing in differ- 
ent counties were unlike. In some counties the supply of 
labor was so abundant and the demand for it so small that 
the negroes could be hired for their board and quarters. 
Such was the case in Orange county. In other counties 
where the demand was active and the number of laborers 
comparatively small, negro men were eagerly paid twelve 
dollars per month, the supply not being equal to the 
demand at that price. This was the case in the Valley 

°See letter of Mayo Cabell in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 16, 1867; Gen 
Howard's Report, p. 665, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Govern- 
ment, 1867-68. 



42 Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

counties. In addition to this money payment they received 
fourteen pounds of bacon, "bone not counted," and one 
bushel of meal per month, which was supposed to be suffi- 
cient to feed a laboring man. In many cases the wages 
were much lower than ten dollars per month. The wages 
paid for unskilled agricultural labor did not often exceed 
this amount. The officers of the Freedmen's Bureau seem 
to have regarded these wages as high as the agricultural 
condition justified. 

The wage paid in 1866 was higher than that of 1865. 
The demand for labor was greater, and the number of 
laborers was apparently smaller than in the year before. 
The agents of the Freedmen's Bureau collected statistics in 
1866 that showed a marked diminution of the number of 
negroes in Virginia. One of the Richmond papers deplored 
the fact that better wages were drawing off the colored 
laborers to the Southern states or to the North while few 
whites were coming in to take their places. 1 Probably the 
emigration of the negroes in 1866 was not nearly so large 
as it was estimated, but the alarm caused by a possible 
scarcity of laborers and an increased labor demand arising 
from reviving industry caused an advance in wages. 

Gen. Howard declared that the low wages prevailing 
in Virginia were the effect of supply and demand; yet he 
thinks that the whites were in many instances unfair to 
the negroes.' 2 The Freedmen's Bureau officers and the 
military officers repeatedly declared that business was pros- 
trated, that capital had vanished, and that labor could be 
employed only at very low wages. The wage paid in 1866 
was not much, if any, less than the wage of 1867. For the 
year 1867 the rep >rt of the Department of Agriculture 
gives a table showing the wages in Virginia in 1860 and in 
1867. The average annual wage for a negro man in 1860 



!P. 765, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866. 

2P. 671, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Government, 1866-67; p. 
79, App. Globe, 1865-66. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 43 

was $105; in 1867, $102; for a woman in 1860, $46; in 1867, 
$43; for a youth in 1860, $39; in 1867, $46. In the pre- 
ceding table of wages per annum, rations and clothing are 
included with the money of 1860, rations without clothing 
in 1867. The clothing comprised two suits of summer 
clothes, two pairs of shoes or one pair of boots, and some- 
times a pair of blankets. 3 

A comparison of the wages of 1860 with those of 1867 
shows that the labor of a free negro in 1867 was not as well 
paid as was the labor of a slave in 1860. The service of a 
slave was undoubtedly worth more than that of an excited 
and restless freed man, who was, according to all testimony, 
much less efficient as a freedman than as a slave. It is 
proper to mention that wages in Virginia were lower than 
in any other of the seceding states except South Carolina. 
The feverish excitement in cotton planting in 1866 was 
responsible for the much higher rate of wages prevailing in 
most of the cotton states. 

The wages paid freedmen in Virginia during this 
period were severely criticized by the friends of the negroes 
outside of the State. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
Fesseuden, had, July 29, 1864, fixed a scale of wages as 
follows: From eighteen to forty years of age, males, $25.00 
per month; females, $18.00. From fourteen to eighteen 
and from forty to fifty-five, males, $20.00; females, $14.00. 
Over fifty- five and from twelve to fourteen, males, $15.00 
per month; females, $10.00. The wages were not for 
skilled labor alone, but for all able-bodied colored persons. 4 

The proposal of such a scale of wages disinclined the 
negroes to take work at the wages current in the State. A 
feeling grew amongst them that they were entitled to three 
or four times as much as they were getting for their work. 
In the "Hunnicutt Convention,*' assembled at Richmond in 



3 P. 416, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1867. 
«P. 388, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1864, 



44 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

April, 1867, there were about two hundred and fifty dele- 
gates, of whom about fifty were whites. In this conven- 
tion there was much talk of "confiscation" and it was de- 
clared that wages were entirely too low. The speeches in 
this convention show that it was thought that about forty 
dollars per month was the right figure for ordinary farm 
labor. 5 

The different attempts to settle the labor question had 
in the spring of 1867 proved only partially successful. The 
wage system was winning its way. The negroes were dis- 
satisfied with the current rate of wages and the terms of 
employment. Their friends outside of the State and their 
"scalawag" leaders in the State were encouraging them to 
demand higher wages than have ever been paid to unskilled 
farm labor, white or black, in the history of Virginia. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Vagbancy and Vagbancy Laws. 

The efforts to induce the negroes to take up the forms 
of labor for which there was a demand and for which they 
had been trained were not entirely successful. They 
either declined to enter into contracts for labor or ignored 
them when formed. Many pilfered from the kitchens of 
the white employers of their friends or lived on the rations 
drawn from the Federal Government. As late as Septem- 
ber, 1865, the Bureau issued to freedmen in Virginia in 
one month 275,887 rations. In December, 1865, 12,058 
negroes were receiving daily rations; about 15,000 were 

^Charlottesville Chronicle, April 20, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 45 

daily fed through the winter. • They sometimes adopted 
bolder tactics, gathered into crowds in remote parts of the 
counties, killed the hogs, sheep and cattle of the white 
farmers and plundered their orchards and fields. In Meck- 
lenburg County, in August, 1865, "the negroes congregated 
at one or two points, killed the poultry, sheep and hogs 
and devastated the cornfields and melon patches of the 
farmers. •• The most common theme of the editorials of 
the State press during the summer and fall of 1865 was the 
idleness and vagrancy of the freedmen. 

How to deal with the vagrancy and petty thieving of 
the negroes was one of the most serious questions of that 
time. The Richmond Times, June 21, 1865, says: "If 
severe penal legislation shall become necessary to prevent 
the free negro from becoming a vagabond and idle thief, 
the Legislature will provide the remedy." Many news- 
paper correspondents were of the opinion that some system 
of "force" was necessary to break up vagrancy amongst 
the freedmen. The Lynchburg Virginian, June 12, 1865, 
said: "Large numbers have deserted the plantations and 
seek to congregate in the cities, so that the most stringent 
police regulations may be necessary to keep them from 
overburdening the towns and depleting the agricultural 
regions of labor. The military authorities seem to be alive 
to this fact and are taking measures to correct the evil. 
But the civil authorities also should be fully empowered to 
protect the com in unity from this new imposition. The 
magistrates and municipal officers everywhere should be 
permitted to hold a rod in terrorem over these wandering, 
idle creatures. Nothing short of the most efficient police 
system will prevent strolling, vagrancy, theft, and the 
utter destruction of or serious injury to our industrial sys- 

«P. 79. App Globe, 1865-66. Messages and Documents of the U. S. 
Government, 1866-67, p 661, 672. P. 378, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 
1865. 

^Richmond Times, Aug. 16, 1865. 



46 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

tern." Nov. 4, 1865, the same paper said: "Therefore to 
prevent the influx of this population to our towns and cities 
the Legislature will be obliged to pass laws of sweeping 
character. A system of registration must be adopted and 
the vagrant laws must be revived and rigidly enforced. 
Apprenticeship, to prevent young negroes from growing up 
in idleness and vagrancy, should be a settled policy, to be 
regulated upon some system of justice and fair dealing 
between both parties. The penalty of vagrancy should be 
virtual servitude and apprenticeship to labor of some kind 
tor a limited period, for only by some such means as these 
will we be able to make this character of labor available," 8 

In September, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian, in an 
editorial, says: "Already measures are being taken to 
compel the newly freed man to labor, and we hope, little 
confidence as we have in the inclination of the negro to 
labor without the application of some kind of force, that a 
system will be adopted to supply the lack of labor that is 
now experienced." 

In September, 1865, the agent of the American Bible 
Society, in compliance with Governor Pierpont's request, 
after visiting Petersburg, Farmville, Lynchburg, Bedford 
City and the country surrounding these cities, says, in re- 
gard to the negro: "The number of able-bodied men is 
small; in respect to labor a goodly number of the able- 
bodied are industrious and doing well for themselves and 
families; numbers must perish unless aided by charity — 
some estimates make one-half, some one-third, some a very 
few as dependent on charity; some negroes everywhere 
feel that they have no responsibility in caring for their 
wives or children or their own personal wants and live to 
some extent on what does not belong to them.'"' 

8 Daily Dispatch, Jan. 4, 1865, had said that the condition of the free 
negro wiil be more pitiable than that of the slave and that a new slavery- 
will arise. 

^hese quotations are taken from the brief informal report left in the 
Governor's office. See Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 9, 1865. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 47 

In denial of all these charges Senator Sumner read in 
the United States Senate the following letter "from a gov- 
ernment officer of Virginia:' ' "With regard to the freed - 
men there is every disposition on their part to make them 
odious. They constantly talk of insurrection, insubordina- 
tion, thieving, idleness and every species of crime and vice, 
all of which I assure is entirely false, for all cases of thiev- 
ing certainly, I am sorry to say, are done by whites." 

It is surprising to read that "a government officer of 
Virginia" ever reported that "all cases of thieving are 
done by whites;" yet so excited and credulous were the 
partisans of the negro that such sweeping statements were 
solemnly read in the United States Senate by such senators 
as Sumner, Wilson, and others of almost equal intelligence. 

On the other hand the wildest reports of the licentious- 
ness, vagabondage and starvation of the freedmen were 
believed. Senator Doolittle, in a speech at New Haven, 
Connecticut, in 1865, declared that at least one million 
negroes had perished from 1860 to 1865; he did not doubt 
that the census for 1870 would show that at least two-fifths 
of the negroes had perished from disease, starvation and 
vice. 1 A writer in Blackwood's Magazine declared in 
1866 that almost one-half of the negroes in the United 
States had perished in the last six years. 2 In some places 
in the South the mortality was thirty per cent, of the sick. 3 
Some thought the negroes as freemen would disappear as 
the Indians and buffaloes were disappearing. Many were 
alarmed at the drunkenness prevailing amongst all classes 
and sexes of the colored people. 4 

°P. 93, Globe, 1865-66. 

J P. 810, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865. 
2 Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1866, p. 532. 
3 P. 376, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865. 

■•Richmond Times, July 3, 1865. 

Mr. Dawson's speech, Congressional Globe, 1865-1866. p. 542. 

For vagrancy and mortality of the negroes, see Enquirer, Nov. 15, 
1865, March 22, Sept. 18, 1866, April 18, 1867; Whig, Dec. 1, 1865, Oct. 2, 
Nov. 5, 1866; Republic, Aug. 10, 1865. 



48 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

It is now well known that the negro did not suffer so 
severely from idleness, dissipation and disease as was be- 
lieved to be the case at that time; nevertheless he suffered 
much. 

The army officers were alarmed at the prevalence of 
vagrancy duriug the year 1865. In an order of June 1, 
1865, General Gregg, stationed at Lynchburg, says: "No 
freedman can be allowed to live in idleness when he can 
obtain any description of work. Should he refuse to work 
he will be treated as a vagabond." June 2, 1865, he issued 
the following order: "Able-bodied men will be prevented, 
as far as it is possible to do so, from deserting the women, 
children and aged persons; and where there is no good 
cause shown why they left, they will be sent back." Gen. 
Wright, in an order issued at Danville, speaks of the dan- 
ger "from vagrant negroes." Gen. Duval, at Staunton, 
June 12, 1865, gave notice "that all negroes now roaming 
the country will be made at once to break up their idle 
pursuits and seek employment." 

In his report for 1865 Gen. O. O. Howard, Commis- 
sioner of the Freedm<n's Bureau, says there was much 
unnecessary idleness amongst the negroes in Virginia. He 
thinks this vagabondage arises in part from the meagre 
wages paid the freedmen. Col. O. Brown, Assistant Com- 
missioner of the Freedmen' s Bureau for Virginia, in an 
order of November 10, 1865, says in regard to the vagran- 
cy of the negro : "Where employment is offered on terms 
that will provide for the comfortable subsistence of the 
laborers, removing them from the vices of idleness and from 
dependence on charity, they should be treated as vagrants 
if they do not accept it, and the rules of the Bureau appli- 
cable to such cases should be rigidly enforced ; while the 
freedmen must and will be jn-otected in their rights, they 
must be required to meet these first and most essential con- 
ditions of a state of freedom, a visible means of support 
and fidelity to contract." In his report of Jan. 2, 1866, 



Negroes and Their treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 49 

Col. Brown said: "In the neighborhood of Norfolk, For- 
tress Monroe and Yorktown about seventy thousand negroes 
had been collected during the war." * * * * "In other 
districts thousands of freedmen were roaming about, with- 
out settled employment and without homes. In localities 
least disturbed by the pressure or conflict of armies and 
where the average amount of land was under cultivation 
the crops were suffering from want of proper attention." 5 
Col. Brown thought that the vagrancy prevailing during 
the year 1865 was owing to an excessive supply of laborers 
and inability of the whites to employ and co-operate with 
free labor, since they had been accustomed to deal only 
with slaves. 

In August, 18B5, the Freedman's Journal, of Alex- 
andria, declared there would be intense suffering amongst 
the negroes in large numbers who were not laying up any- 
thing for the coming winter, but were either idle and 
unemployed, or dissipating their earnings for drink or 
trifles. 6 

The actual vagrancy was not as great as it appeared 
to many people at that time. Befoie the war nearly all 
the negroes in Virginia had been slaves and had conse- 
quently been kept closely employed on their owners' plan- 
tations. People were unaccustomed to the sight of loung- 
ing, idle negroes, and were therefore the more alarmed at 
the idleness and vagrancy of the late slaves. It is the 
opinion of some citizens who lived through that period 
that the negroes were not less industrious than at present, 
yet the people were alarmed at the unwonted idleness of 
the freedmen and demanded remedial legislation of the 
General Assembly. 

The Legislature met early in December, 1865, and 



Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866. 
"Lynchburg Virginian, August 25, 1866. 



■t 



50 Negroes and Jheir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

passed, on January 15, 1866, the following preamble and 
act : 7 

" Whereas it is represented to the General Assembly, 
That there hath lately been a great increase of idle aud 
disorderly persons in some parts of this Commonwealth, 
aud, unless some stringent laws are passed to restrain and 
prevent such vagrancy and idleness, the State will be over- 
run with dissolute and abandoned characters to the great 
detriment of the public weal: For remedy whereof, 

"1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That the 
overseers of the poor, or other officers having charge of the 
poor, or the special county police, or the police of any 
corporation, or any one or more of such persons, shall be 
and are hereby empowered and required upon discovering 
any vagrant or vagrants within their respective counties 
or corporations, to make information thereof to any justice 
of the peace of their county or corporation, and to require 
a warrant for apprehendiug such vagrant or vagrants, to 
be brought before him or some other justice; and if, upon 
due examination, it shall appear that the person or persons 
are within the true description of a vagrant, as hereinafter 
mentioned, such justice shall, by warrant under his hand, 
order such vagrant or vagrants to be employed in labor for 
any term not exceeding three months, and by any constable 
of such county or corporation, be hired out for the best 
wages that can be procured; to be applied, except as here- 
after provided, for the use of the vagrant or his family, as 
ordered by the justice. And if any such vagrant or 
vagrants shall, during such time of service, without suf- 
ficient cause, run away from the person so employing him 
or them, he or they shall be apprehended, ou the warrant 
of a justice, and returned to the custody of such hirer, who 
shall have, free of any further hire, the services of said 
vagrant for one month in addition to the original term of 
hiring; and said employer shall then have the power, if 

7 Acts 1865-66, pp. 91-93. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 51 

authorized by the justice, to work said vagrant, confined 
with ball and chain; or should said hirer decline to receive 
again said vagrant, then said vagrant shall be taken by 
the officer upon the order of a justice, to the poor or work 
house, if there be any in said county or corporation, and be 
delivered to the overseer or superintendent, who shall work 
said vagrant for the benefit of said county or corporation- 
or, if authorized by the justice, to work him, confined with 
ball and chain, for the period for which he would have 
had to serve his late employer, had he consented to receive 
him again; or should there be, when said runaway vagrant 
is apprehended, any public work going on in said county 
or corporation, then said vagrant, upon the order of a 
justice, shall be delivered over by said officer to the super- 
intendent of such public work, who shall, for the like last 
mentioned period, work said vagrant on said public works, 
confined with ball and chain, if so authorized by the justice. 
But if there be no poor or work house in said county or 
corporation, and no public work then in progress therein, 
then, in that event, said justice may cause said vagrant to 
be delivered to any person who will take charge of him. 
Said person to have his services free of charge, except 
maintenance, for a like last mentioned period, and said 
person so receiving said vagrant is hereby empowered, if 
authorized by the justice, to work said vagrant confined 
with ball and chain; or should no such person be found, 
then said vagrant is to be committed to the county jail, 
there to be confined for the like period, and fed on bread and 
water. But the persons described as the fifth class of vag- 
rants, in the second section of this act, may be arrested 
without warrant by the special county or corporation police, 
and when so arrested shall be taken before a justice, who 
shall proceed to dispose of them in the mode prescribed in 
this section, or may at once direct them to be committed 
to prison for a period not exceeding three months, to be 
kept in close confinement and fed on bread and water. 



52 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

"2. The following described persons shall be liable to 
the penalties imposed by law upon vagrants: 

"First — All persons who shall unlawfully return into 
any couuty or corporation whence they have been legally 
removed. 

"Second — All persons who, not having wherewith to 
maintain themselves and their families, live idly and with- 
out employment, and refuse to work for the usual and 
common wages given to other laborers in the like work in 
the place where they then are. 

"Third— All persons who shall refuse to perform the 
work which shall be allotted to them by the overseers of 
the poor as aforesaid. 

"Fourth — All persons going about from door to door, 
or placing themselves in streets, highways or other roads, 
to beg alms, and all persons wandering abroad and beg- 
ging, unless disabled or incapable of labor. 

"Fifth — All persons who shall come from any place 
without this commonwealth to any place within it, and 
shall be found loitering and residing therein, and shall 
follow no labor, trade, occupation, or business, and have 
no visible means of subsistence, and can give no reasonable 
account of themselves or their business in such place. 

"3. All costs and expenses incurred shall be paid out 
of the hire of such vagrant, if sufficient, and if not suf- 
ficient, the deficiency shall be paid by the county or 
corporation." 

The language of this act applies alike to all persons, 
^oth white and black, but it was enacted primarily to sup- 
press vagrancy among the negroes. 

This statute was annulled by Maj. Gen. Terry, then in 
command in Virginia, in an order issued only nine days 
after its passage. In this order Gen. Terry sums up the 
provisions of the act and declares: "The ultimate effect of 
the statute will be to reduce the freedmen to a condition of 
servitude worse than that from which they have been 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 53 

emancipated, a condition which will be slavery in all but 
its name." In conclusion of his review he says : "It is 
therefore ordered that no magistrate, civil officer, or other 
person shall, in any way or manner, apply or attempt to 
apply, the provisions of said statute to any colored person 
in this department." 8 

Carl Schurz had said in his report to President John- 
son: "Although the freedman is no longer considered the 
property of the individual master he is considered the 
slave of society, and all independent state legislation will 
share the tendency to make him such." 9 It was declared 
that the vagrant act of January 15, 1866, was only the first 
step toward enslaving all negroes to the community, which 
it was alleged had already practically been done in some 
of the Gulf States. 

This statute was not in force long enough to be tested 
in its practical workings. It was liable to grave abuses ; 
yet it cannot be said, in view of all the facts narrated on 
the preceding pages, that it was enacted to re- enslave the 
negroes, either to an individual or to society. This was 
the only act touching the negroes that was annulled by the 
military authorities. With the exception of the Contract 
Law, the Vagrant Act was the only positive enactment 
of the Legislature that was seriously criticised by the 
negroes or their friends. 



8Pp. 908, 1305, Globe, 1865-66. 

^Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 1305. 

»See the Congressional debates on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, Civil 
Rights Bill and the Reconstruction Acts, Congressional Globe, 1865-67. 
For comparison of the "Black Laws" passed by the Southern Legislatures 
in 1865-66. with similar laws in the Northern states, see Herbert, Solid 
South. For full account of these laws, see Burgess, Reconstructic. , and 
Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi. For partisan account, see Blaine, 
Twenty Years in Congress, and McCall, Thaddeus Stevens. 



54 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

CHAPTEE VII. 
Contract Laws. 

During the year 1865 almost all the contracts between 
white and colored men for labor were verbal agreements. 
In many cases they were indefinite in their terms and led 
to much misunderstanding between the employer and the 
employee. The negroes, after the lapse of a few months, 
were surprised to find how much they had received on 
their wage account and how small an amount was due 
them. They therefore became discontented, abandoned 
their work and made complaint of their wrongs before the 
Federal authorities, alleging that they were denied the 
wages promised them or were wronged in the payment of 
the same. Since the contracts were verbal, it was impos- 
sible for the courts to determine who was in the wrong. 

To obviate this source of dissatisfaction and litigation, 
the Legislature, February 20, 1866, enacted: "That no 
contract between a white and a colored person for the 
labor or service of the latter for a longer period than two 
months shall be binding on such colored person unless the 
contract be in writing, signed by such white person, or his 
agent, and by such colored person, and duly acknowledged 
before a justice or notary public or clerk of the county or 
corporation court, or overseer of the poor, or two or more 
credible witnesses in the county or corporation in which 
the white person resides or in which the labor or service is 
to be performed. And it shall be the duty of the justice, 
notary, clerk, or overseer of the poor, or the witnesses to 
read and explain the contract to the colored person before 
taking his acknowledgment thereof, and to state that this 
has been done in the certificate of the acknowledgment of 
the contract." 00 In this section of the statute there is no 

°°Acts 1865-66, p. 83. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 55 

discrimination against the freedman, since he can enforce 
his contracts whether verbal or written, while the white 
man can enforce his contract with a negro only when it is 
written and properly acknowledged. 

In the account of the evolution of a wage system fre- 
quent references were made to the uncertainty and unre- 
liability of the colored labor of the State. It was shown 
that the planting of a tobacco crop, the leading staple in the 
section of the State occupied chiefly by negroes, was a great 
risk on account of the transient and uncertain character of 
labor. Since the restraints of slavery had been removed 
from them the negroes seemed to have the idea that they as 
freemen were bound by no contract or promise, if interest 
or fancy invited them to violate it. The offer of a slight in- 
crease for a day or two in the daily wage would induce the 
laborers to desert, at the most critical time of planting or 
harvesting, the planters in whose service they had been 
engaged at the less critical season of the year under contract 
to remain until the crop was harvested or the work finished. 
Frequently no inducement in the form of better pay was 
necessary to cause them to drop their work and wander 
away. The advent of a circus or the announcement of a 
revival meeting meant a more or less protracted holiday for 
the negroes, regardless of their contracts or the urgency of 
the work they had agreed to perform. 

The Richmond Times, in an editorial of June 10, 1865, 
says: "The contract, however, does not weigh a feather 
with the negro. He deserts his employer without a 
moment's warning, and does not deign to assign a reason for 
his conduct. He leaves the plow in the unfinished furrow, 
the dinner half cooked, the half washed linen in the suds, 
and the patient whom he has contracted to nurse in the 
midst of the fierce delirium of fever. He laughs at the 
obligation of his contract, and does not care a tarthing for 
the injury which his conduct inflicts upon his employer. 
Is there no remedy for this! Until laws regulating con- 



56 Negroes and Their Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

tracts between our citizens and the negro are enacted, we 
hope the military authorities will see that all parties are 
protected and forced to observe their contracts." 

During the year 1865 negro labor remained very fickle. 
It was urged by county meetings of the farmers that the 
Legislature should at an early date do something to regulate 
and protect contracts between white men and negroes for 
labor. Otherwise it was declared that no one could ven- 
ture to plant extensively or to undertake any great indus- 
trial enterprise. 1 

When the Legislature convened in December, 1865, it 
took up the contract labor question. We have seen that by 
the first section of the act of February 20, 1866, it was pro- 
vided that no contract between a white and a colored man 
for labor for two months or longer was enforceable against 
a negro unless it was in writing. By the second section of 
this act penalties were provided for enticing away or em- 
ploying a negro under contract in writing according to the 
statute. 2 The second section reads as follows: "If any 
person shall entice away, from the service of another, any 
laborer employed by him under a contract, as provided by 
this act, or shall knowingly employ a laborer bound to ser- 
vice to another under such contract, he shall forfeit to the 
party aggrieved not less than ten nor more than twenty 
dollars for every such offense; to be recovered by warrant 
before any justice of the peace." 

This section provided no direct penalty for the viola- 
tion of his contract by the negro; yet the indirect conse- 
quences to him were very severe. If a negro did not seek 
and find employment, the statutes of 1866 regarded him as 
a vagrant and provided for his arrest and forced labor. 3 

*For facts in regard to uncertainty and unreliability of negro labor 
in 1865 and 1866, see the preceding chapter on the evolution of a wage 
system. 

'Acts 1865-66, p. 83. 

3 Acts 1865-66, pp. 91-93. 



Negroes and Jheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 57 

Few farmers, as dependent on hired help for long seasons 
as were the tobacco planters in the eastern section of the 
State, would employ negroes as agricultural laborers for 
shorter periods than two months; it was therefore necessary 
for the great body of negro laborers to enter into long con- 
tracts for labor or remain unemployed. If they remained 
unemployed, they were subject to the penalties for vagran- 
cy; if they entered into contracts for labor for two months 
or longer, they were practically forced to remain with their 
employer, since it was unlawful for any other planter to 
employ them while under contract. 

Within two weeks after the passage of this act regu- 
lating and protecting contracts between white and colored 
persons, the Legislature, in the fourth section of an act en- 
titled, 4 "An Act to encourage Immigration and protect 
Immigrant Labor" enacted: "That any immigrant, 
bound by contract as aforesaid, who shall, without good 
and sufficient cause, abandon or leave the service of his or 
her employer, shall be liable to said employer for double 
the amount of wages for the unexpired term of service; and 
any immigrant who shall fail to enter the service of an 
employer agreeable to contract, shall be liable in like man- 
ner and for a like amount; and the claim for all such liabil- 
ities shall be a lien on all future wages of such immigrant, 
wherever earned, or from whomsoever due, until the same 
be repaid: and any person who shall employ any immi- 
grant, or otherwise entice any immigrant from his or her 
employer, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on 
conviction thereof, shall be fined in a sum not less than the 
amount of wages for the unexpired term of the contract, 
and may be imprisoned, at the discretion of the jury trying 
the case, for a period not longer than six months." 

This act in the first three sections legalized labor con- 
tracts between citizens of Virginia and Europeans desiring 
to emigrate to Virginia, by declari ng that all such contracts, 

♦Acts 1865-66, pp. 234-235. 



58 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

even if made in Europe, were enforceable in Virginia. 
The fourth section above quoted provided penalties for the 
violation of such contracts more severe than were inflicted 
on negroes for violating labor contracts. It was hoped 
that most of the immigrants would come from England and 
Scotland. 5 There was certainly no wish on the part of the 
people of Virginia to enslave these white Europeans whom 
they were urging by all possible means to come to the State. 6 
It was felt that the employer of labor had certain rights to 
the service of the employee under contract for long service 
that ought to be protected by positive statute. 

The act of February 20, 1866, regulating and protect- 
ing negro labor contracts, and the act of March 3, 1866, reg- 
ulating and protecting immigrant labor contracts, were both 
susceptible of abuse; yet it does not appear that it was the 
intention of the Legislature to imperil the rights of the 
freedmen or the immigrants, but to force them to respect 
their contracts. The uncertain character of colored labor 
in Virginia at that time rendered some drastic contract 
labor law necessary. It is difficult to propose any that 
would be more effective or subject to fewer abuses than 
the act of Feb. 20, 1866. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
The Slave Code Repealed. 

The General Assembly of Virginia, in a sweeping bill 
Feb. 27, 1866, recognized the new condition of the former 
slaves and free negroes by repealing the chief features of 

*Acts 1865-66, p. 235. 
«Acts 1865-66, pp. 287-293. 



Negroes and Jheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 59 

the old slave code. All "acts and parts of acts relating to 
slaves and slavery" were expressly repealed. 7 

Chapter one hundred and seven of the Code of 1860 
relating to free negroes was repealed. This chapter con- 
tained very minute provisions for the regulation of free 
negroes, for control of their movements and for their 
expulsion from the State if they failed to comply with 
certain legal requirements in regard to registration. All 
these provisions were deliberately swept away by this act. 

Likewise chapter two hundred of the Code of 1860, 
which provided punishments for offenses by negroes, was 
repealed. This chapter defined the penalties for a numer- 
ous class of crimes by negroes, such as assaults on white 
men; delivering to a slave a copy of the register of freedom; 
plotting or conspiring to rebel or make insurrection; mak- 
ing use of "provoking language or menacing gestures to 
white men;" furnishing "any pass" to a negro; keeping 
firearms or other weapons; "engaging in a riot, rout, un- 
lawful assembly or making seditious speeches;" selling, 
preparing or administering any medicine, except a slave 
administering medicine by his master's orders, or a free 
negro to his own family or the family of another person with 
the consent of that person. Under certain conditions a 
free negro could be sold into slavery. This whole chapter 
with its long list of special crimes and punishments for 
negroes was repealed. 

Chapter ninety-eight of the Code of 1860 relating to 
patrols was repealed. 8 The repeal of this patrol statute in- 
dicates a distinct purpose on the part of the Legislature to 
deal with the negroes as free men. 

The Legislature repealed chapter two hundred and 
twelve of the Code of 1860 relating to the proceedings 
against negroes. In this act it was declared that, "All 
laws in respect to crimes and punishment and in respect to 

'Acts 1865-66, p. 84. 
SActs 1865-66, pp. 84-85. 



60 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

criminal proceedings, applicable to white persons shall ap- 
ply in like manner to colored persons (and to Indians) 
unless when it is otherwise specially provided." 8 

Sections twenty-five to forty -seven, both inclusive, of 
chapter one hundred and ninety-two, providing penalties 
and punishments for persons assisting slaves to escape from 
their masters and to leave the State, were repealed, since 
the whole slave system was recognized as destroyed. 8 

The Code of 1860, chapter one hundred and ninety- 
eight, sections twenty-six to twenty-nine, inclusive, made 
it unlawful for any free person, by speaking or writing, to 
maintain that the owners had not the right of property in 
their slaves; or to encourage the slaves to rebel or to make 
insurrection or to resist their masters. This chapter also 
provided that postmasters should exercise the utmost pre- 
caution to see that nothing of an inflammatory nature in 
regard to slavery should pass through the mails. All these 
provisions were repealed by the Legislature Feb. 27, 1866. 
By this same act, section thirty of chapter one hundred 
and ninety-eight of the Code, forbidding free negroes to re- 
main in the State without permits of the county court 
where the negro was a resident, was repealed. 

But section thirty-one of chapter one hundred and 
ninety-eight of the Code of 1860 was not repealed. It reads 
as follows: "Any free person who shall bring a free negro 
into this State shall be confined in jail not more than six 
months and fined not exceeding five hundred dollars. This 
section shall not apply to a person traveling into, or 
through, the State with a free negro as a servant, nor to a 
master or skipper of a vessel or steamboat, with a free 
negro on board, who shall depart therewith; but any such 
free negro who shall be found away from such vessel or 
boat, or from the lodging of his employer, except on busi- 
ness or with the written permission of such master or em- 
ployer, shall be punished with stripes." 

8Acts 1865-66, pp. 84-85. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 61 

Section thirty-two of chapter one hundred and ninety- 
eight of the Code of 1860 declared that: "No free negro 
shall migrate into this State." "For such voluntary 
migration on the part of a free negro a penalty of stripes 
and cost of prosecution was to be inflicted on such free 
negro from time to time until he should leave the State." 
This section was not repealed. 

It is difficult to determine to what extent these unre- 
pealed provisions were executed in Virginia during the 
period from April, 1865, to April, 1867. The writer has 
found no well authenticated instance in which any free 
negro or white man was punished for violation of either of 
these provisions. Besides, it is expressly stated in the 
act of February 27, 1866, repealing other sections of 
chapter one hundred and ninety-eight of the Code, 
that, "All acts and parts of acts imposing on negroes 
the penalty of stripes where the same penalty is 
not imposed on white persons," are repealed. 9 These 
sections of the Code of 1860, impairing the move- 
ment of free negroes into the State, were allowed to remain 
on the statute books while the penalty for violation of them 
was repealed by the part of the act just quoted, since no 
white persons were subject to stripes for migrating into the 
State. 

By this same act of Feb. 27, 1866, the statute prohibit- 
ing harboring negroes, the assembling of negroes for wor- 
ship when such worship was conducted by a negro, and 
every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction 
in reading and writing, or in the night time for any pur- 
pose, was repealed. The laws prohibiting white men from 
meeting with negroes to instruct them, or to participate 
with them in any assembly, were repealed. At the same 
time all restraints on the freedom of buying and selling agri- 
cultural produce were removed from the negro population. 

»Acts 1866-66, p. 85. 
"Acts 1865-66, p. 85. 



62 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

A marked advance toward the full recognition of the 
negro as a freeman was made when the Legislature repealed 
the statute prohibiting negroes from owning firearms, 
swords or other weapons or ammunition. 1 This statute 
was repealed despite the fact that many people in the State 
felt that it was unsafe and unwise to allow the negroes to 
possess arms 2 in such an unsettled state of affairs as pre- 
vailed from 1865 to 1867, when it was feared that the 
negroes would reproduce the horrible excesses of the West 
Indian freedmen. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

Outrages on Freedmen, and the Civil Courts 
From 1865 to 1867. 

The emancipation of more than one-half million slaves 
in Virginia at the close of a prolonged war presented many 
serious problems for solution. Tens of thousands of soldiers 
familiar with violence were returning to their homes. A 
laxity, a lawlessness, a proneness to commit crime and in- 
dulge in deeds of violence are the unfailing consequences of 
war, and especially of civil war. This disposition did not 
exist in Virginia alone but was felt throughout every state 
in the Union, even in the Northern states farthest re- 
acts 1865 66, p. 85. 

2 Whig, Jan. 4, Jan. 15, Aug. 4, 1866. The Confederacy had taken 
steps to enroll slaves as soldiers in the Confederate army in the spring of 
1865. Examiner, March 18, 1865; Dispatch, March 25, 1865; Schwab, The 
Confederate States of America, page 194. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 63 

moved from the theatre of the war. 3 The presence of a 
lately emancipated race, excited by their new-found free- 
dom and insolent toward their former masters, aggravated 
the otherwise serious problem of restoring law and order in 
the prostrate State. There were many acts of violence and 
many personal encounters between whites and blacks, yet 
the surprising fact is that there were not more. The expla- 
nation of this is that the great mass of the whites felt no 
bitterness toward the negro for the events of the four pre- 
ceding years. They felt that the colored people had done 
little or nothing to secure their freedom. They did not 
hate them or wish to do violence to them, but simply re- 
garded them as an inferior race for whom they felt a kindly 
contempt. 4 Very few, if any, were outraged or murdered 
from any effort or disposition on the part of the whites to 
undo their emancipation or to deny them the enjoyment of 
their freedom. 5 The disputes and frays between the whites 
and blacks were generally the difficulties that are likely to 
accompany the iutermingling of races radically different. 

Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, after an examination 
of the charges made by Senator Wilson, said in the United 
States Senate in regard to the alleged outrages on negroes: 
"Testified to by nobody either, except agents of the Freed- 
nien's Bureau, and other fellows of an equally interested 
stripe, who, like the hair worms, only wriggle in muddy 
water. These fellows, male and female, have found the 
woes of the negro such an easy and profitable way to fame 
and consideration that, like the dogs of Lazarus, they live 
by licking his sores; and to hear and see them we would 



spresident Johnson's message, December, 1866, on returning House 
Bill No 613, p. 3839, Congressional Globe, 1865-66. 

<Gen Terry's opinion, Congressional Globe, 1885-66, p. 1833 ; Ibid, p. 
1156; Julian's speech, Ibid, p. 3210; Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1866, 
p. 595. 

^Charlottesville Chronicle, Feb. 28, 1867; Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 
2, 1866, Col. Brown's Report. 



64 Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

think the world was exceedingly wicked, wholly on ac- 
count of the negro, and for no other reason. * * * * I 
am inclined, therefore, to think that in the first place these 
killings, if done at all, are not done by any but common 
offenders. Everybody knows the tribal antipathy exist- 
ing between the lower sort of white men and negroes, 
and no one expects that it will not be the source of 
frequent brawls and quarrels, especially since the 
blacks have now no masters either to advise or protect 
them. And the false and foolish notion of equality 
which you have lately put into the head of the negro 
amounts only to a standing invitation to every white 
man to break that head as soon as it insults him. 
These tales are too monstrous for belief, have no founda- 
tion upon which to rest, and the few cases which give rise 
to them would no doubt show, as usual, that neither of the 
parties are wholly innocent or wholly guilty. In nine 
cases out of ten they would turn out mutual brawls, the 
consequence of which is often the most fitting punishment 
for those engaged in them. 6 One man out of ten thousand 
is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of 
the whole people of the South, whereas nothing is said of 
the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men 
who treat the negro well." 7 

At present nothing seems clearer than that most of the 
conflicts had no political significance and were only com- 
mon brawls and combats, such as are summarily disposed 
of by a police judge or a justice of the peace; yet this long 
list of disputes and conflicts was paraded in Congress as a 
justification of the Freedmen's Bureau and as a proof of the 
insecurity of the rights of freedmen. 8 The number of such 

6 App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 154. 

'Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 96. 

8 Gen. Howard's report, p. 671, Messages and Documents, 1866-67; Rev. 
Richmond's speech, Charlottesville Chronicle. April 25, 1867. See speeches 
of Senator Wilson, Representative Julian and other radical leaders, Con- 
gressional Globe, 1865-67. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 66 

difficulties was small, when it is remembered that there 
were more than one-half million negroes in the State of 
Virginia. It was never claimed that freedmen in Virginia 
experienced any difficulty in securing justice from the State 
courts in suits involving money or property. 9 It was, 
however, asserted that juries were inclined to inflict on 
negroes the maximum penalties of the law, in cases of 
theft, burglary or such offenses; that they were too rigor- 
ous in their condemnation of comparatively mild offenses; 
but it was not charged that the processes of the courts and 
the decision of the jurors were not strictly according to the 
statutory provisions of the Code of 1860, which the Legisla- 
ture in is session of 1865-66 had made applicable to whites 
and blacks alike. 1 

It was declared, moreover, very difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to secure a verdict against a white man for assaulting 
or murdering a black. 2 The great mass of the whites were 
not disposed to permit any insolence on the part of the 
negroes. The deep-seated conviction in the minds of the 
whites that the negroes were an inferior race and should be 
subordinate to white men in the community, made the 
whites less tolerant of any independence and aggressive- 
ness on their part, and rendered conflicts between the two 
races more frequent. It was often said: "The negro is all 
right in his place." Of course this means that he is all 



9Qen. Schofield's opinion, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95 ; 
Ibid, Messages and Documents of U.S. Government, 1866-67, p. 240. Judge 
Sheffey, in his charge to grand juries, urges that equal and impartial jus- 
tice shall be given to freedmen. This charge was published by special 
request of the bar of Amherst and Rockbridge counties, Whig, April 23, 
1866. For similar charge by Judge Christian, in Henrico county, and for 
editorial comment on these charges, see Whig, April 28, 1866. 

°Col. O. Brown's Report, Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1569 ; Senator 
Van Winkle's statement, Ibid, p. 1465 ; Gen. Howard's Report, pp. 663-664, 
Messages and Documents, 1867-68. 

iSenator Van Winkle's speech, Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1465. 

2App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95. 

5 



66 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

wrong out of his place. 3 Most, of the Virginians had, and 
still have, very definite ideas of what a negro's place is. 
If a negro attempted to cross this more or less well-defined 
limit and to use insolent and insulting language to a white 
man, he was liable to suffer the consequences, and juries 
were not disposed to impose on his assailant the maximum 
penalties of the law. On the other hand the wanton assault 
of a freedman by a white man was severely condemned by 
the great mass of the whites. For such offenses white 
juries and courts manifested no sympathy and punished the 
aggressor with the full penalties of the statute. 

The trial of Dr. Watson for the alleged cold-blooded 
murder of a negro in the summer of 1866 and his acquittal 
by a white court of his county was the most famous case in 
the criminal courts of Virginia during this period. It was 
said that, on very slight provocation, he had, after a lapse 
of nearly twenty-four hours, shot and killed a negro, the 
coachman of one of his neighbors. In November, 1866, 
Dr. Watson was tried and acquitted in Rockbridge county. 
Thereupon Gen. John M. Schofield, the military officer in 
command in Virgiuia, ordered him rearrested and tried by 
a military commission under the congressional act of July 
16, 1866. On the assembling of the Commission Court a 
writ of habeas corpus was sued out before the Circuit Court 
of Richmond, to which General Schofield declined compli- 
ance, Dec. 19, 1866. In the meantime the Attorney Gen- 
eral of the United States had investigated the case and de- 
cided that the Commission Court had no jurisdiction. The 
President then ordered Dr. Watson discharged. 4 

Gen. Schofield declared the Watson case "a fair type 
of a large number of cases in Virginia." 6 If this case was 

3 Blackwood's MagaziDe, May, 1866, p. 595. 

^American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p 765; Richmond Dispatch, Jan. 
4, 1867; Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1565; App. Congressional Globe, 
1866-67, p. 95; Whig, Dec. 20, 1866; Enquirer, Dec. 18, 1866; Dispatch, 
Jan. 4, 1867. 

*Gen. Schofield's statement, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95,. 



Negroes and Their Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 67 

such as he represented it, the declaration that it was a 
"fair type'' of many other cases in the State is entirely too 
strong. Hon. S. McD. Moore, of Lexington, Rockbridge 
county, Virginia, in a letter read by Senator Doolittle in 
the United States Senate, Feb. 19, 1867, says: "As good 
order prevails and the laws are generally as well admin- 
istered as I have known to be the case for the 
last fifty years." 6 He declares that most of the reports 
in regard to the unjust administration of the laws had 
arisen from two cases in that section of the State. 
One of the two cases was the "Watson affair. A few such 
cases as this is said to have been did much to create 
the impression in the North that the murder of a negro 
was in Virginia considered perfectly justifiable if the negro 
had been insolent or insubordinate. 

Many in Congress and in the North believed that the 
average Virginian entertained a deadly hatred of the ne- 
groes whom they were anxious to kill as having no longer 
the place or value of chattel slaves. Entertaining these 
opinions, they confidently declared that every murder of a 
negro by a white man and every failure of a court to pun- 
ish the white man was confirmation of their opinions and 
rendered vigorous intervention by the Federal Government 
the only salvation of the freedmen. In their opinion the 
Freedmen's Bureau, the Freedmen' s Court, the Civil 
Rights Bill, the Military Commissions, and the Reconstruc- 
tion Acts were necessary to protect the lives of the negroes. 
The number in the United States actually entertaining these 
opinions was not large, but they were earnest and aggres- 
sive. The politicians and the unscrupulous made use of 
the sincerity of this class for purposes purely personal or 
for party advantage. 

The number of actual outrages was never large. 7 The 



•^Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1567. 

'Enquirer editorial, July 24, 1866; Whig, March 23, Nov. 22, Nov. 28, 
1866. It was alleged by the negroes and their friends that the whites bad, 



68 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

press of the State generally declared that good order pre- 
vailed throughout Virginia at that time. The Charlottes- 
ville Chronicle, February 28, 1867, says: "We can speak 
for Virginia, there never was less crime (except thieving 
on the part of the freedmen) in this State. There have 
doubtless been negroes killed by white men and white men 
killed by negroes, but on the whole, a more orderly and 
law-abiding community does not, in our opinion, exist on 
this continent, if anywhere." The Eichmond Dispatch 
considered that the administration of justice in Virginia 
was at that time approximately fair and equal. 

The freedmen had learned that theii most trivial 
charges against each other or the whites would receive a 
ready hearing by the agents of the Freedmen' s Bureau, and 
they did not allow the Bureau agents to eat much idle 
bread. No report of outrages, however absurd or poorly 
attested, was neglected. The most trivial brawl was mag- 
nified into a riot in which many were wounded and killed. 
By the time these disturbances had been reported in the 
radical press and announced in the United States Congress 
by Senator Wilson, or some equally imaginative member 
of the House, they absolutely defied recognition even by 
the parties to the original brawl. The "scalawags," 
"carpetbaggers" and newspaper correspondents industri- 
ously gathered and disseminated the reports of outrages on 
colored people. 

Amongst so large a number of people many brawls 
and petty disturbances would occur in the most peaceful 
times, and under the most ideal conditions; yet the con- 
gressional radicals shut their eyes to these facts and made 
no allowances for the fact that the State was just emerging 
from a prolonged war, and was further embarrassed by the 



in various places in the South, burned or destroyed negro churches and 
school houses, Very few, if any, such buildings were destroyed by the 
whites in Virginia. The Whig, May 7, 1866, declares that no negro 
churches had been burned by the whites in Virginia, 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 69 

presence of the lately emancipated slaves. Senator Wilson 
and other radical members of Congress brought forward the 
long list of suits, brawls and outrages as a justification of 
the various acts passed by Congress for the protection of 
the negroes. In reply to these charges Seuator Davis, in a 
speech in the Senate, after full examination of the lawless 
acts reported by the congressional radicals, declared that 
in his deliberate opinion there was not as much lawless- 
ness and violence in any six of the states lately in rebellion 
as in the single state of New York. 8 Other members of 
Congress who had investigated the matter were almost 
equally strenuous in their denial of the alleged outrages. 

The evidence in support of the truthfulness of these 
charges is to the highest degree unsatisfactory and uncon- 
vincing. 9 They were in many cases entire fabrications 
without the slightest basis of fact. As a single instance of 
their utter unreliability, it was reported in the radical 
papers that several negroes had been shamefully outraged 
at Lynchburg, Virginia, The details of the affair were 
given with great minuteness; the name of the Freedmen's 
Bureau agent at that place, making the official report of 
what he had seen and learned by investigation, was given. 
When these reports finally reached Lynchburg no one 
there had heard of the outrages or anything like them. 
The Bureau agent declared that no one having the name of 
the reporter of these lawless acts had ever been connected 
with his Bureau in Lynchburg; that no such acts had 
occurred, and that the very best of order prevailed in his 
entire sub-district. 

This report is a fair sample of hundreds that were 
published in the radical papers outside of the State. 

sCongressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1466. 

9For evidence of the unreliable character of many of the reported 
outrages and the effect of such reports on Northern public opinion, see 
Congressional Globe, 1865-66, pp. 1407-1411; Whig, Nov. 3, 1866. 

oLynchburg Virginian, Aug. 10, 1866. 



70 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

Most of the writers of these letters giving accounts 
of the assault and murder of negroes asked to have 
their names kept secret, declaring that it would imperil 
their lives to have it known that they had reported these 
outrages. Their wishes were respected, and they were 
thus emboldened to flood the Congressional Committee on 
Eeconstruction with such reports as malice or party inter- 
est could invent. 

General O. O. Howard, the Commissioner of the Freed- 
men's Bureau, in his annual report for L866, declared that 
the number of conflicts between whites and blacks in Vir- 
ginia constantly grew less, and that the position of the 
negroes was improving, yet the complaint was made that 
in some parts of the State the negroes were occasionally 
outraged and that the offenders usually were not punished 
by the minor judicial tribunals of the State, if it was 
charged that the negro had been insubordinate or insolent 
to a white man. 1 

In his report of November, 1866, General O. O. How- 
ard said in regard to the six counties bordering on the 
Potomac which were included in the military district of 
Maryland: "The condition of the freedmen in the portion 
of Virginia included within this district, as shown by the 
report of General Stanard for the months ending May and 
June, 1866, and the official records for succeeding months, 
has been generally satisfactory. No complaints of a serious 
nature were received." 2 

In reference to the condition of affairs in Virginia, 
in the same report he says: "Some improvement is re- 
ported in the feeling of the whites towards the freedmen, 
and yet the numerous murders and robberies of which this 
office is notified are evidences of bad feeling or weakness 



J Gen. Howard's Report, Messages and Documents, 1866-67, p. 671. 
Gen. Schofleld's opinion, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95. 

^Messages and Documents, 1866-67, p. 688. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 71 

on the part of the State officials whose duty it is to pre- 
serve the peace and to punish crime." 3 

The Dumber and character of the outrages on negroes 
reported to the Freedmen's Bureau were grossly exagger- 
ate!. A- a rule the Bureau officials did not examine the 
evidence in support of these chaiges, but reported and in 
a large measure acted on ex parte testimony. In times of 
great pubic excitement the wildest reports gain credence. 
At that time the air was full of reports of outrages and 
riots, most of which had not the slightest foundation in 
Ia«t. Most of the "numerous murders and robberies" to 
which General Howard refers in his report were of this 
class. 

He made this report about the time the excitement in 
regard to the Dr. Watson case was highest, and doubtless 
had that particular case in mind when speaking of the 
"bad feeling or weakness" of the courts. 

< ieneral Terry, the military commander in the Depart- 
ment of Virginia, declared that it would be unsafe to en- 
trust the great body of the freedmen in Virginia or else- 
where in the South to the care of the local authorities or 
the local Legislation. 

His chief grounds for this opinion was that the whites 
hated the negroes on account of their attachment to the 
"Union," and if the protecting hand of the United States 
Government were withdrawn would soharrassand embitter 
their lives that they would rise in bloody insurrection 
against their oppressors. 4 It seems never to have been 
dear to many of the army officers that the white people of 
the State did not hold the negroes responsible for the war and 
it- consequences and did not entertain for them any feeling 
of personal hostility on account of their changed condition. 



3Ibid, p. 671. See Col. O. Brown's Report, Congressional Globe, 
1866-67, p. 1569. 

'Testimony of Gen. Terry given before the Reconstruction Commit- 
tee, p. 1833, Globe, 1SG5-66; Enquirer, March 31, 1866. 



72 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

Whatever feeling there was that the negro should not enjoy 
full civil or political privileges did not arise from any 
hatred of hiin as a race or as an individual, but from a fixed 
and firm conviction that he was an inferior race, incapable 
of the highest duties and privileges of citizenship in a dem- 
ocratic commonwealth. 

The whites were always ready to resent any attempt 
by a negro to force himself into a position of social equality 
or to assume the political leadership of the community. 
From these causes arose many of the conflicts between the 
two races. The number of such conflicts was considerably 
increased after the passage of the Eeconstruction Acts of 
1867 and the enfranchisement of the negroes. 5 

Before the passage of the Eeconstruction Acts in the 
spring of 1867, the Ku Klux Klan was unknown in Vir- 
ginia. No mention is made in the Bureau reports of such 
an organization until 1868. It was then declared that the 
operations of these organizations "have been very rare in 
this State." The word "Ku Klux" as used at that time 
was a generic term for all lawless secret combinations or- 
ganized to frighten or maltreat negroes. 

Colonel Brown in his report of the operations of the 
Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia for the month of April, 
1868, says: "The secret organization known as the Ku 
Klux Klan have made their appearance in various locali- 
ties, visiting the houses of colored men, at night in some 
cases, placing ropes around their necks and threatening to 
hang them on account of their political opinions. No 
further violence has been offered. The object of these mid- 
night demonstrations, which have been very rare in this 
State, appears to be to intimidate and control the freedmen 
in the exercise of their right of franchise." 6 



5 See newspapers of the State for increased number of conflicts be- 
tween whites and blacks after the enfranchisement of the freedmen. 

ep. 510, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1868-69. 



Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 73 

This is his first reference to such lawless bands. 
From this report it is seen that the object of these organi- 
zations in Virginia was not to plunder or murder negroes 
but to deter them from exercising "their right of fran- 
chise." 

The negroes were subjected to some outrages from a 
very unexpected source. Some of the Federal soldiers in 
Virginia in 1865 "took considerable liberties with them and 
their belongings." In some instances they "plundered" 
them. 7 They "spread the tents and threw up the negroes." 
In this way many were hurt and some were reported killed. 
A Federal soldier at Charlottesville relieved Eev. Fairfax 
Taylor, a prominent colored leader, of his watch. The 
soldiers stationed in Virginia after the war were frequently 
engaged in brawls and personal encounters with the freed- 
men. Some negroes were "tied up" by army officers to 
force them to tell the truth. 8 These troubles between 
negroes and soldiers were of the same kind and originated 
from the same causes that brought on similar altercations 
and contests between blacks and native Virginians. 

Many agents of the Freedmen's Bureau oppressed and 
swindled the freedmen. Other persons went about from place 
to place assuring them that they were soon to be given the 
land of the former slaveholders. In some instances they 
went so far as to stake off the farms into sections of about 
forty acres each. These lands were to be given them as 
pay for their past services as slaves and for their devotion 
to the Union. Frequently these impostors pretended to 
put the credulous negroes in possession of the land, and 
collected a fee to pay for the title deed which they gave 
them to establish their ownership. One of the deeds given 
to an Albemarle county negro read as follows : "As 



rWaddell, History of Augusta County, pp. 319, 325; Ibid, 337-338. 
SMessages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1867-68, p. 289. 



74 Negroes and Jheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so have I 
lifted five dollars out of this nigger's pocket." 9 

The belief that they were to be given the lands of the 
late Confederates persisted in the minds of the freedmen 
for several years after the close of the war. The fact that 
the lands seized by the United States Government, the 
so-called abandoned lands, were then occupied by the 
negroes under the direction of the Freedmen's Bureau, led 
the great mass of them to believe that they, too, would 
soon secure their share of land. This credulous and 
expectant attitude of mind rendered them ready victims of 
the unscrupulous "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers," who 
did not neglect the opportunity to enrich themselves at the 
expense of their dupes. Their ingenuity in devising 
plausible schemes for swindling the negroes was truly 
admirable. Many of them represented themselves as con- 
fidential agents of influential government officials, or as 
friends and representatives of philanthropic individuals or 
societies in the North, who were said to be preparing great 
things for the negroes. After winning the ready confi- 
dence of the freedmen they received from them, under 
various pretexts, considerable sums of money, and created 
expectations that could never be realized. 

Quite a serious riot broke out in Norfolk in the night 
of April 16, 1866. The freedmen met to celebrate the 
passage of the Civil Rights Bill. About twelve o'clock a 
shot was fired on Nicholson street. A general row fol- 
lowed. An innocent white spectator named Whitehurst 
was shot dead; Mrs. Whitehurst (a white woman) was 
mortally wounded; several others were hurt, and one negro 
was shot in the eye. There was much drinking amongst 
the colored people that night. One colored woman was 
arrested on account of her inflammatory and threatening 
language. Major Stanhope, of the United States army, 

9 Most of the facts in regard to these impostors were obtained from 
negroes who knew them from personal experience. See Documents 
Relating to Reconstruction, (passim) , edited by Fleming. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 75 

immediately sent our an armed force and dispersed the 
mob. In a short time four arrests were made. In regard 
to this tumult there were various conflicting reports. 1 

From this review of the "outrages on negroes and the 
action of the courts" it is seen that the actual number of 
outrages was small when it is considered that more than 
one-half million freedmen were turned loose amongst a 
white population of more than seven hundred thousand, 
at a time when society was demoralized by the results of 
war; that the whites did not cherish any hatred toward the 
negroes on account of the events of the preceding four 
years; that the combats between whites and blacks did not, 
in most cases, arise from any attempt to undo or minimize 
the results of emancipation, but were generally the results 
of mutual brawls; that some of the attacks on negroes by 
white men were provoked by insolence or insulting lan- 
guage on the part of the blacks; that in such cases the 
courts of Virginia sometimes refused to find the white 
aggressors guilty of any offense; that the courts had little 
disposition to excuse or acquit a white man who had 
assaulted or murdered a negro who had not been insolent 
or insulting and had conducted himself in the manner 
which most white people thought becoming a free negro; 
that freedmen in the Virginia courts experienced little or 
no difficulty in securing justice in money or property mat- 
ters; that in proceedings against negroes charged with 
thefts, burglaries, and murders, juries usually imposed some- 
thing like the maximum penalties. It has been seen that 
they were sometimes wronged by their supposed friends, 
the soldiers, "the scalawags" and "carpetbaggers." From 
the reports of the officers of the Freedmen' s Bureau and 
the press, it is seen that the condition of the freedmen was 
constantly improving from 1865 to 1867; that lawlessness 
in the State was rapidly decreasing, and that the decisions 
of the civil courts were approaching fairness. 



"Lynchburg Virginian, April 20, 1866. 
According to some reports two negroes were killed. 



76 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

CHAPTER X. 

FltEEDMEN AND ClVIL RIGHTS IN 1865 AND 1866. 

The Legislature that convened in Richmond in Decem- 
ber, 1865, met under the provisions of the constitution pro- 
mulgated at Alexandria, in 1864, by the "restored govern- 
ment' ' of Virginia. The constitution of the State in force 
before and during the war had fallen with the State gov- 
ernment at Richmond. 

The Alexandria constitution had abolished slavery 
by the following provisions: "Slavery and involuntary 
servitude (except for crime) is hereby abolished and pro- 
hibited in the State forever." "The General Assembly 
shall make no law establishing slavery or recognizing prop- 
erty in human beings." The Legislature of "restored Vir- 
ginia" had, however, enacted but few laws in regard to 
negroes. 

At the close of hostilities in Virginia people recog- 
nized that the results of the war had effectually freed the 
slaves; yet there had been no State legislation to define 
their status. The old "free negro" laws of the Code of 
1860 were still on the statute book. 2 The slaves had, so far 
as State legislative enactments are concerned, succeeded to 
the status of "free negroes" as defined by the Code of 1860, 
but the war had done more than this for them. The white 
people of the State knew that the Legislature would have 

2 A delegation of negroes from Richmond called on President Johnson 
in June, 1865, and claimed that their condition as freedmen was worse 
than it was when they were slaves. They stated that passes were re- 
quired of them in Richmond ; that the old free negro laws still prevailed ; 
that they experienced difficulty in holding their church property ; that 
they could not appeal to the courts for justice and protection, and that 
they suffered numerous other wrongs. President Johnson told them that 
matters were in a state of transition and that many things must be en- 
dured until they could be remedied. Republic, June 19, 1865. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 77 

to define anew the rights of free colored men, and sooner or 
later grant to them the whole list of civil rights and some 
political rights. 

Owing to the peculiar situation in Virginia it was dif- 
ficult to effect an early meeting of a representative law- 
making body to adjust the laws of the State to the changed 
conditions. A representative General Assembly of the 
State convened in December, 1865, and immediately took 
up the question of the freedmen. 

In a joint resolution the Legislature, February 6, 1866, 
expressed its opinion on slavery and the future position of 
the freedmen in the following language: 3 "That involun- 
tary servitude, except for crime, is abolished, and ought 
not to be re-established; and that the negro race among us 
should be treated with justice, humanity and good faith; 
and every means that the wisdom of the Legislature can 
devise, should be used to make them useful and intelligent 
members of society." 

"That Virginia will not voluntarily consent to change 
the adjustment of political power as fixed by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States; and to constrain her to do so in 
her present prostrate and helpless condition, with no voice 
in the councils of the nation, would be an unjustifiable 

breach of faith." 

This resolution expressed about what the white people 
of the State felt. The statement that Virginia would not 
voluntarily consent to change the adjustment of political 
power was intended as a declaration of hostility to the 
enfranchisement of the freedmen, which the people were 
unwilling to accept, either in L866 or in 1867, when it was 
thrust upon the State by congressional legislation. 

In January and February, 1866, several important 
bills touching the freedmen were enacted into laws, About 
nine months had by that time passed since the close of 
hostilities in Virginia an d the practical emancipation of 

3Acts, 1866-66, p. 449. 



78 Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

every slave in the State. In the meantime, the legal posi- 
tion of the freedmen was very indefinite. 

March 3, 1865, Congress had passed a very mild 
Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which lacked all the drastic fea- 
tures of the Freedmen's Bill of 1866. The purpose of this 
bill in 1865 was only to assume charge of all ' 'abandoned 
lands" and the control of all subjects relating to freedmen. 
There was a real need of some such agency as this bill pro- 
vided to advise and protect the freedmen during the sum- 
mer and fall of 1865. The opposition to the presence and 
work of the Bureau agents was not so bitter in 1865 as it 
was in the years following, when they were invested with 
much greater power, and the necessity for their inter- 
ference no longer existed. 4 

By the Code of 1860 free negroes were allowed to testify 
only in the case of the Commonwealth for or against a 
negro or an Indian, or in a civil case to which negroes or 
Indians only were parties. They were not allowed the 
right of trial by jury, to carry arms, or to be away from 
their place of abode later than ten o'clock at night. They 
were also subject to many other minor restraints that were 
unnecessary and impracticable in the changed state of 
affairs in the summer and fall of 1865. 

Although there had been no statutory change, the 
people felt that the status of the free negro had in fact been 
revolutionized. In the Alexandria County Court a negro 
was put on trial without a jury in September, 1865, and 
sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. The negro's 
counsel moved to arrest the judgment on the ground that 
the negro, being a freeman, had the right of trial by jury. 
The opposing counsel contended that the free negro pro- 
ceedings were legal, the Code of Virginia providing that a 
free negro should be tried for a felony by a court of five 
justices of the peace and not by a jury. The court com- 

<Compare Act of March 3, 1865, (p. 141, App. Globe, 1864-65,) -with 
that of July 16, 1866, (pp. 366-367, App. Globe, 1865-66). 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 79 

posed of five justices of the peace sustained the negro's 
counsel in his appeal. 5 

From this decision and similar ones it is seen that, 
while the letter of the law remained unchanged, the spirit 
of the times had swept away many of the legal discrimina- 
tions against free colored men. 

In the same county, in October, 1865, a justice of the 
peace had a negro deprived of a fowling piece, on the 
ground that the statutes of Virginia did not allow negroes 
to bear arms. A provost judge revoked this action, declar- 
ing negroes had "all the rights of whites and no less." 6 

There was on the part of the whites no serious effort to 
enforce most of the old "free negro" laws. There were few 
attempts to disarm freedmen in accordance with the pro- 
visions af the Code. General Terry was petitioned by the 
whites to disarm the negroes in certain sections because 
they were threatening to make an insurrection against the 
whites. 7 On the whole, there was comparatively little 
opposition to the negroes' owning and carrying arms, or to 
their conducting themselves as free men, as long as they 
were not "saucy" or "insolent" to the whites. 

In discussing the social position of the freedmen in 
October, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian says: "His social 
condition is not so much changed after all. The negro is 
the laborer and menial after all. He now collects his own 
wages with which to pay his own rent, clothing, taxes and 
doctor bills. In other respects, his relation to his master 
has undergone very little alteration." 

February 28, 1866, the General Assembly passed the 



'Lynchburg Virginian, September 14, 1865. 

«Lyuctaburg Virginian, October 14, 1865. Nevertheless license author- 
izing a negro to perform the marriage ceremony was refused by the Court 
of Hustings, in Richmond, on the ground that there was no law for grant- 
ing such license. Enquirer, November 15, 1865. 

^General Terry's testimony before the Reconstruction Committee, p. 
18S4, Globe 1865-66. 



80 Negroes and 7heir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

following act in regard to negroes as witnesses: 8 "That 
colored persons and Indians shall, if otherwise competent 
and subject to the rules applicable to other persons, be 
admitted as witnesses in the following cases: 

"1. In all civil cases and proceedings, at law and in 
equity, in which a colored person or an Indian is a party, 
or may be directly benefitted or injured by the result. 

"2. In all criminal proceedings, in which a colored 
person or an Indian is a party, or which arise out of an 
injury done or attempted or threatened to the person, 
property or rights of a colored person or Indian, or in 
which it is alleged in the presentment, information or 
indictment, or in which the court is of opinion, from other 
evidence, that there is a probable cause to believe that the 
offense was committed by a white person, in conjunction or 
co-operation with a colored person or Indian. 

a 3. The testimony of colored persons shall, in all cases 
and proceedings, both at law and in equity, be given ore 
tenus and not by deposition; and in suits in equity, and in 
all other cases in which the deposition of the witness would 
regularly be part of the record, the court shall, if desired 
by any party, or if deemed proper by itself, certify the 
facts proved by such witness, or the evidence given by him, 
as far as is credited by the court, as the one or the other 
may be proper under the rules of law applicable to the case; 
and such certificate shall be made part of the record." 

Before the war a negro or an Indian was a competent 
witness only in the case of the Commonwealth for or against 
a negro or an Indian or in civil cases to which 
negroes or Indians only were parties. 9 This new 
statute of Feb. 28, 1866, declared that they should be 
heard as witnesses in any and all suits to which any colored 
person was a party or in which the interest, direct or indi- 



SActs 1865-66, pp. 89-90. 
9 Code of Virginia, p. 724. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 81 

rect, of a colored person was involved, or in which any 
crime had been done or attempted to be done or threatened 
to the person, property, or rights of a colored person. 

At the time of the passage of this act almost all the 
cases involving the interests of colored people, or crimes 
against their person, property or rights were adjudicated in 
the Freedmen's Court or in other judicial tribunals of Fed- 
eral creation. Before these courts there was no distinction 
of witnesses on account of race and color. These courts 
from the first recognized that the negroes were entitled to 
as "full and equal benefit of all Jaws and proceedings for 
the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white 
citizens, and are subject to like punishments, pains and 
penalties and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, 
regulation or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." 

It cannot be said that the limitation of negroes as wit- 
nes^'s id cas.-s directly or indirectly concerning the interest 
or welfare of some colored person was a denial of any 
"right," since the power to "testify" in cases in which the 
witness is not a party interested in the outcome of the suit, 
cannot be claimed as a right; but it is to be regarded either as 
a privilege conferred by the community on the would-be wit- 
ness, or as a duty imposed on him for the good of society. 
Yet whatever may be the abstract philosophy of the matter 
it was in fact a discrimination against negroes to limit their 
testimony to particular cases. 

While the General Assembly at Eichmond was repeal- 
ing the old slave code and trying to define the rights 
and privileges of the freedmen, Congress was debating the 
Civil Rights Bill, which was passed over the President's 
veto, April 9, 1866. This bill declared "all persons born 
in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, 
except Indians not taxed," citizens of the United States; 
and, in addition to the right to testify in all cases on the 
same terms as whites, it conferred on the negroes about all 
the rights enjoyed by white men except the right to sit on 



/ 



82 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

juries, to vote, and to hold office. It also provided penal- 
ties for any attempt, on the part of any individual or any 
municipal or State officer, to curtail or deny these rights. 
The effect of this bill was very far-reaching. It em- 
boldened the negroes to demand various privileges they 
had not yet enjoyed. As a single instance of this it may 
be well to mention that, for about one year after the close 
of the war, it was unsettled whether negroes had the right 
to ride on public street cars. After the passage of the 
Civil Eights Bill the negroes toward the last of April, 1866, 
decided to test their right to ride on the Eichmond street 
cars. This led to some riotous demonstrations, but the 
president of the road, after an interview with General 
John M. Schofield, the military commander in Virginia, 
determined to recognize the privilege. Many of the citi- 
zens were dissatisfied with the concession, yet peaceably 
acquiesced in it. 1 For some time the cars were divided 
into two classes, one of which, indicated by a white ball, 
was for white ladies and gentlemen with ladies, the other 
for all classes. This arrangement continued until May, 
1867. 2 

The Legislature, February 27, 1866, passed an act 
declaring: "All laws in respect to crimes and punish- 
ments, and in respect to criminal proceedings, applicable 
to white persons, shall apply in like manner to colored 
persons and to Indians unless it is otherwise specially pro- 
vided." 3 

By this act all special punishments and proceedings 
peculiar to negroes, except the minor discriminations 
against negroes previously mentioned in connection with 



"Pp. 315-316, App. Globe, 1865-66. 

American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 759. 

2Charlottesville Chronicle, May 4, 1867. 

A colored preacher and his wife were ejected from the cars at Rich^ 
mond in September, 1867. Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 26, 1867. 

SActs 1865-66, p. 84. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 83 

"the repeal of the slave code," were abolished. Whites 
and blacks were thenceforth put on an equality before the 
law in respect to crimes and punishments. 

The Federal military authorities in the State soon 
after the passage of the acts of February 27 and 28, 1866, 
transferred to the civil courts full jurisdiction in all cases 
in nearly all the counties of the State. 4 In a few places 
society was so unsettled and the conflicts between whites 
and blacks so frequent that the Federal authorities did not 
feel justified in closing the Provost or Freedmen's courts. 
In the fall of 1866, General Terry reported that in three 
counties it had been necessary to restore Bureau courts 
after they had been abolished. 5 These courts remained in 
York County until the close of 1867. 6 

After the restoration of the full authority of the civil 
tribunals in all cases, the agents of the Bureau were 
required by the order of the Assistant Commissioner of the 
Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia to be present and to aid the 
colored litigants by their counsel and advice in all trials 
within their jurisdiction, including criminal trials or pre- 
liminary hearings before justices of the peace, to which a 
colored person was a party. It was the duty of these 
agents to make an immediate report of "any instance of 
oppression or injustice against a colored party, whether 
prosecutor or defendant, and also in case the evidence of a 
colored person should be improperly rejected or neglected. " 
"They were also required to examine and report if in any 
instance a justice of the peace, attorney for the common- 
wealth, grand jury, or other authority refused justice to a 
colored person by improperly neglecting a complaint or 
declining to receive an oath or sworn information tendered 



«P. 671, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67, p. 663; 
Ibid, p. 65 ;' House Document No. 120, 1st Session 39th Congress. 
»P. 671, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67. 
«P. 664, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1867-68. 



84 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

by such a person whereby a trial or prosecution might be 
prevented through partiality or prejudice." 

After the passage of the act of February 28, 1866, 
negroes were in some instances denied the right to testify 
in cases in which they were interested. A flagrant example 
of such denial was reported of the York County Court at 
its session held May 19, 1866. The proceedings of this 
court were reported by the Freedmen's agent, but it does 
not appear that either the Federal or State authorities took 
any steps to punish the offenders. 7 

In the Circuit Court of Alexandria Judge Thomas, in 
1866, decided in a case in which it was attempted to intro- 
duce colored testimony, that such testimony was inadmis- 
sible and that congressional action could not make it admis- 
sible, since the State had a right to decide who were com- 
petent to testify and had decided that colored testimony 
was not admissible in civil suits to which white men alone 
were parties. This decision of Judge Thomas was accord- 
ing to the law of Virginia as laid down in the Act of Feb- 
ruary 28, 1866, in regard to negroes as witnesses, but it 
was declared to be an inlringement of the Civil Eights Bill. 
The case was therefore removed to the United States Dis- 
trict Court. 8 

A little later five magistrates of the Corporation Court 
of Norfolk refused to receive the testimony of a negro. A 
process was issued under the Civil Rights Bill in accord- 
ance with which the offending officials were arrested and 
held to bail to appear at the following term of the United 
States District Court. 9 

It does not appear that there were many attempts in 
Virginia to infringe the Civil Kights Bill in form, though 
it was often infringed in spirit, the two cases above men- 

TPp. 46-47, House Document No. 120, 1st Session 39th Congress, 
8 P. 765, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866. 
9 P. 759, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 85 

tioned being the most prominent instances of its formal 
infringement. 

The Civil Rights Bill and the new Freedmen's Bureau 
Bill passed July 16, 1866, encouraged the negroes in their 
demands for equal rights with the whites. They were 
therefore not content with the Act of February 28, 1866, 
allowing them to testify in all cases in which a negro was 
in any way interested. 

April 20, 1867, the Legislature of Virginia passed the 
following act in regard to negroes as witnesses: 

1 '1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, 
That the act passed February 28, 1866, entitled an act in 
relation to the testimony of colored persons; and the 
twentieth section of chapter one hundred and seventy-six 
of the Code of 1860, concerning the competency of wit- 
nesses, be and the same are hereby repealed. 

"2. Be it further enacted, That hereafter colored per- 
sons shall be competent to testify in this State as if they 
were white." 

This act declared colored persons competent to testify 
' 'as if they were white. ' ' The partisans of the freedmen 
declared that this concession was not made from an enlarged 
sense of duty to the negro, but was the result of external 
pressure in his behalf. 

Whatever may have been the motive of the Legisla- 
ture, this act came too late to be of any practical value. 
Seven weeks beforo its enactment, Virginia had, by the 
passage of the Reconstruction Bill of March 2, 1867, been 
reduced to a military district, and placed under the con- 
trol of a Major- General of the United States army. 

The State authorities had, in the spring of 1867, con- 
ceded to the negroes freedom, religious liberty, the security 
of property and person, trial by jury, and the right to 
testify and to hold land. They also enjoyed the rights of 



«Acts 1866-67, p. 860. 



86 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

assembly and petition, of freedom of speech and the press, 
and of owning and bearing arms. They were therefore in 
possession of almost all the rights enjoyed by whites, 
except the privilege of serving on juries, voting, and hold- 
ing office. 



CHAPTEB XI. 

Enfranchisement of the Freedmen. 

The constitution formed by the "restored govern- 
ment" of Virginia at Alexandria in April, 1864, limited 
suffrage to "white male citizens of the commonwealth." 
The pressure of the events of the war and the political 
sympathy of the government at Alexandria had not been 
sufficiently strong to prompt Governor Pierpont and his 
Constitutional Convention to enfranchise the negro. 1 It 
was therefore not to be expected that the great mass of the 
people of Virginia, who felt they bad nothing to gain and 
much to lose by such a step, would consent to put the bal- 
lot in his hands. 

It was generally felt that it was necessary to confer on 
the freedmen all the civil lights and the political rights 
enjoyed by women and minors; but that was as much as the 
whites were willing to concede. Meetings were held 
throughout the State accepting emancipation, but protest- 
ing against the enfranchisement of the negroes.* 2 The rep- 
resentative candidates for office were agreed that Virginia 



iFor account of the Constitution of Virginia and the Pierpont Legis- 
lation at Richmond in June, 1865, see Globe 1865-66, pp. 1633-34. 

"Richmond Times, August 22, 1865. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 87 

was a "white man's" government. Mr. Johnson, one of 
the most prominent candidates for Congress in the Lynch- 
burg district, declared that he "would keep Virginia out 
of the Union (unrepresented at Washington) forty years 
rather than tolerate negro suffrage." 3 The General Assem- 
bly of "restored Virginia" was in session in Eichmond 
June 19-23, 1865. Speaker Downey, addressing the Legis- 
lature just before adjournment, said: "Whatever they 
may do to other states, thank God, they cannot saddle 
negro suffrage upon us." 

The press of the State almost universally opposed 
negro suffrage. 4 The Eichmond Times, June 21, 1865, 
says: "The former masters of the negroes in Virginia 
have no feeling of unkindness toward them, and they will 
give them all the encouragement they deserve, but they 
will not permit them to exercise the right of suffrage, nor 
will they treat them as anything but 'free negroes.' They 
are laborers who are to be paid for their services and pro- 
tected as are unnaturalized foreigners, infants and women, 
but vote they shall not." The Enquirer, January 25, 1866, 
opposes negro suffrage, "miscegenation, and negro equal- 
ity," and declares that it does not like a plan by which 
"the vote of a white man can be killed by that of a negro." 
March 24th of the same year it opposes negro suffrage under 
any condition. 

The Whig, December 24, 1866, predicts enfranchise- 
ment of the negroes, and urges the whites to make the 
negroes their friends. A week later it says that the enfran- 
chisement of the blacks will only add to the Southern repre- 
sentation in Congress if the whites are prudent and wise. 
This newspaper consistently opposed negro suffrage, but 
urged the whites to keep the negroes from falling under 



3 Lynctaburg Virginian, September 14, 1865. 

<Times, June 21, 1865; Enquirer, June 25, 1865, October 15, 1865, Octo- 
ber 25, 1866; Whig, January 25, 1866, December 24, 31, 1866; Dispatch, 
January 8, 1867. 



88 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

the influence of "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers," if they 
should be enfranchised by congressional act. 

In February, 1867, the Lynchburg Kepublican main- 
tains that ultimately the ballot must be given to respecta- 
ble and worthy negroes, and suggests that those paying 
taxes on two hundred and fifty dollars worth of property 
be enfranchised. By this qualified suffrage, it was said, 
the State might escape unqualified suffrage, which the 
Jacobins in Congress were threatening to impose. 

The enfranchisement of the negroes began to be dis- 
cussed shortly after the war. In June, 1865, a Eepublican 
organization formed at Alexandria resolved, amongst other 
things, "that the Constitution of Virginia should be 
amended so as to confer suffrage upon, and restrict it to, 
loyal male citizens without regard to color." 6 This was the 
first time the Eepublican party committed itself to negro 
suffrage in Virginia, but unqualified negro suffrage was 
not yet advocated. A meeting of the radical Union men 
of Frederick county, at Winchester, June 28, 1865, opposed 
the entire exclusion of the colored race from the ballot box. 

A negro meeting in Petersburg, June 7, 1865, resolved, 
"That representation and taxation go hand in hand, and it 
is diametrically opposed to republican institutions to tax 
us for the support and expense of the government and 
deny us, at the same time, the right of representation." 6 

In November, 1865, a convention of colored men met 
at Alexandria, severely arraigned the whites of the State 
and the Pierpont government which had been transferred 
from Alexandria to Eichmond in the early summer of 1865, 
and asserted their purpose to claim all the rights of white 
men, including the franchise. 7 

May 17, 1866, the "Unconditional Union Convention" 



^Republic, June 19, 1865. 
«Republic, June 10, 1865. 
TLynchburg Virginian, Nov. 12, 1865. 



Negroes and Iheir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 89 

met at Alexandria. About sixty delegates representing 
seventeen counties were present. Many of them were self- 
appointed. John Minor Botts, a prominent and influential 
old time Whig, presided. After much debate, a resolution 
favoring qualified suffrage for both races was adopted. 
Botts opposed negro suffrage, but would have voted for it 
if he had believed the people of Virginia would sanction it. 8 

In the radical convention held in Philadelphia, Sep- 
tember, 1866, Botts vigorously opposed universal manhood 
suffrage. The other delegates from Virginia favored it. 
Eev. James W. Hunnicutt, a delegate from Virginia who 
afterwards achieved notoriety as a leader of the radicals 
and negroes, favored the enfranchisement of all men except 
"rebels." The convention adopted a report favoring 
''manhood suffrage.'' Thereafter the Bepublican party 
was committed to unqualified negro suffrage. 

Various motives influenced the advocates of negro 
enfranchisement. Many of the radicals were sincere in 
their efforts, believing that the ballot only would protect 
the late slaves and fit them for the responsibilities of citi- 
zenship. Many white agitators were seeking their own 
advancement through the black voters. Others wished to 
avenge themselves upon the former ruling class. The 
negroes themselves came to believe that freedom without 
the privilege of voting and holding office was a failure. 

The hostility to negro suffrage was not perceptibly 
mitigated during the year 1866. February 16, 1867, the 
Charlottesville Chronicle, one of the most careful and con- 
servative papers of the State in all its editorials, said: 
"The people of Virginia prefer military law — very harsh- 
est military law, yes even Tiberius himself" rather than 
the negro suffrage laws then being discussed by Congress. 

The Legislature in a joint resolution, February 6, 1866, 
declared: "That Virginia will not voluntarily change the 



^Enquirer, May 22, 1866. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 766. 



90 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

adjustment of political power as fixed by the Constitution 
of the United States.'' 9 February 9, 1865, the "restored 
government' 1 of Viginia at Alexandria had promptly rati- 
fied the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution of the 
United States. A really representative Legislature of all 
Virginia had by their resolutions of February 6, 1866, 
accepted the abolition of slavery as an accomplished fact. 
The Constitution as amended by the legislative ordinance 
of February 24, 1866, limited suffrage to the white male 
citizens of the Commonwealth of the age of twenty-one 
years. 1 The Legislature on January 9, 1867, unanimously 
in the Senate, and with one dissenting vote in the House, 
refused to ratify the fourteenth amendment. 2 These votes 
of the Legislature on the different phases of the negro ques- 
tion indicate very accurately the prevailing sentiment in 
Virginia. 

The white people of Virginia were in the spring of 
1867 almost unanimously opposed to "immediate universal 
manhood suffrage," which was thrust upon the State by 
the congressional Reconstruction Acts. 3 They never be- 
came reconciled to unqualified negro suffrage, and by the 
Constitution of 1902 practically disfranchised most of the 
blacks. 

In Congress it was frankly avowed that the purpose of 
enfranchising the negroes was to secure the perpetual 
ascendency of the Republican party in the nation through 
the support of these black allies. 4 If there had appeared 

SActs, 1865-66, p. 449. 

OActs (Alexandria) 1865, p. 30. 

"Acts 1865-66, p. 449. 

lActs 1865-66, p. 226. 

2 Acts 1866-67, p. 508; Whig, January 10, 1867; Waddell, History of 
Augusta County, p. 346. 

s Prospectus Richmond Daily Examiner November 30, 1866; App. 
Globe 1866-67, p. 146. 

*Mr. Boyer's speech, Globe 1865-66, p. 2466. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 91 

any probability at that time that the negroes would vote the 
Democratic ticket few will dare say that devotion to the 
principles of universal equality would have induced the 
Eepublican majority in Congress to put the ballot in the 
hands of the freedmen. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

Education of the Negroes from 1865 to 1867. 

The statute making it unlawful for negroes on any 
condition to assemble for instruction in reading and writing 
and for religious worship conducted by a negro without the 
presence of a white person was not repealed until Feb. 27, 
1866; yet they assembled as freely as whites, both in 
schools and religious meetings, for more than ten months 
after the close of the war, until by action of the General 
Assembly all restraints of this character were removed. 

Many of the most thoughtful men in the State urged 
that the late slaves should be encouraged and assisted to 
secure as thorough an education as they were capable of 
receiving. 5 They favored the education of the negroes as a 
matter of justice, since it was unfair to them to turn them 
loose as freemen to win their own support and to compete 
with white men without giving them an opportunity to fit 
themselves for the struggle. They also felt that the blacks, as 
ignorant and unskilled free men, would prove a serious 
burden and a positive danger to the State. The press of 



^General Howard's Report, p. 672, Messages and Documents of U. S. 
Government, 1866-67; General Terry's Report, pp. 1833-34, Globe 1S65-66. 



92 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

the State generally advocated an earnest effort to educate 
and elevate them. 6 

Many others of the most thoughtful class felt that the 
blacks should be aided and encouraged iu getting only such 
school training as would be useful to them as private per- 
sons and would enable them to pursue with success the 
common forms of labor and the trades to which they as 
slaves had been accustomed and to which they would of 
necessity confine themselves in the future. It was gen- 
erally felt that they would not be called on to serve the 
State in a political capacity, and it did not seem probable 
that they would for many years be able to earn a living in 
the professions. 7 

A large number of the people during the first two 
years following the war were either indifferent to educating 
the negro in any form or were positively opposed to it. 
Many of the more ignorant and illiterate whites were not 
pleased with the idea of educating and elevating the freed- 
men. 8 Slavery, which had formerly clearly distinguished 
the condition of the poor whites from that of the blacks, 
had been swept away. They now saw the negroes free and 
aspiring to all the civil and political rights of the whites. 
Naturally they did not relish the idea of becoming the 
rivals of the negroes whom they despised as an inferior 
race, and by whom they were in turn despised as "poor 
white trash." This class of whites now felt that it was 
more important than ever before to keep the blacks sharply 
distinguished from the whites by artificial as well as racial 



6 Editorial Lynchburg Virginian, October 22, 1865; Whig, August 
20, 1866. 

TThis was the general feeling throughout the State. See the news- 
papers of the time. 

8General Terry's Report, pp. 1833-1834, Globe 1865-66; General How- 
ard's Report, p. 655, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 
1866-67. Only the lowest class of the whites opposed all forms of negro 
education and advancement. 



Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 93 

barriers. They were therefore opposed to giving them train- 
ing and culture that would render them rivals in the 
trades and would tend to obliterate the distinctions between 
the two races. 

As early as October, 1861, the American Missionary 
Association had opened schools for negroes at Fortress 
Monroe. ' J As the war progressed interest in their educa- 
tion incrpased in the North. Various societies, philan- 
thropic and religious, began to raise money to send teach- 
ers to the South. These teachers appeared in Virginia in 
considerable numbers in the summer of 1865. The Freed- 
men's Bureau generally furnished only the buildings and 
the material equipment. The teachers were paid from 
funds collected in the North by the various societies. 
Schools were opened in which nearly all the teachers were 
white, many of them being women from New England. 
During the period from 1865 to 1867 a considerable num- 
ber of negroes began to teach in these schools, yet the num- 
ber of white teachers in the colored schools was always 
about two-thirds of the whole teaching force. 1 By the close 
of the year 1865 there were in Virginia, mainly in the 
southeastern part of the State, ninety schools, one hundred 
and ninety-five teachers, and eleven thousand five hundred 
pupils. 2 By the close of 1866 the number of schools and 
students had considerably increased. 8 

The officers of the Freedmen's Bureau from time to 
time reported that the feeling in regard to the necessity of 
educating the freedmen grew stronger each year. General 
Howard, in his report at the close of the year 1866, says 



9 P. 116, Virginia School Report 1871. 

"For an excellent account of the work of these schools from 1861 to 
1870, see pp. 115-118 of Virginia School Report 1870. 

1 American Annual Cyclopaedia 1867, p. 323. 

2 American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865, pp. 376-77. 

3American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 337. There were more than 
14,000 pupils in Freedmen's schools, January 1, 1867. 



94 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

there had been a noticeable change of sentiment in regard 
to negro schools since the war. Leading statesmen were 
urging the people to educate the negroes; religious conven- 
tions had passed resolutions urging upon their members 
the importance of giving them instruction. 4 

There was still some opposition to these schools by the 
whites. The Bureau officers constantly complained that 
the more ignorant element of the population continued 
their opposition to the enlightenment of the negro, and it 
seems that their complaints were well founded. Yet much 
of the ill feeling toward the colored schools was due not so 
much to an unwillingness to have the blacks educated as to 
the manner in which it was being done and to the persons 
by whom these schools were conducted. 6 As has been men- 
tioned elsewhere, a very large part of these teachers were 
imbued with the radical abolition ideas of the North. They 
believed in equality of rights and privileges for all races 
and colors, and encouraged a certain freedom of manner 
towards the whites which the whites were not prepared to 
tolerate from the blacks. In a short time the negroes fell 
in a large degree under the influence of the teachers. All 
this displeased the whites, who felt that the negroes were 
being led to expect too much in a social way, and were, at 
the same time, being alienated from their old friends and 

masters. 

Another phase of this educational work that did much 
to disincline conservative citizens to encourage these out- 
side teachers was that they were directing their efforts, in 
a very large degree, to preparing the freedmen to ask full 
political privileges. The prejudices engendered by two 
hundred and fifty years' acquaintance with the negro as a 



*P. 655, Messages and Documents of theU. S. Government, 1866-67; also 
p. 666, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Government, 1867-68. 

SLynchburg Virginian, October 22, 1865; Whig, August 20, 1866; Gen- 
eral Terry's Report, Globe 1865-66, pp. 1833-34; General Howard's Report, 
Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67, p. 655. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 95 

servile race would not allow the Virginians to grant this 
without a struggle. Yet in some of the towns the citizens 
froni the first expressed a willingness to co-operate with the 
agents ot the Freedmen's Bureau and the Northern philan- 
thropic societies. Where such a feeling prevailed, the 
schools were soon turned over to the local municipal 
authorities with the understanding that these schools should 
continue for a stipulated time to receive the support from 
the philanthropic societies which had been given the 
schools before the assumption of their control by the city. 
Such was the case with the city of Lynchburg. 7 

It was freely charged by some of these teachers that 
the negro school buildings had been burned by the whites. 
The very small number of houses destroyed and the absence 
of evidence to implicate the whites renders it highly proba- 
ble that scarcely a single building was destroyed by a white 
incendiary during that period. 8 

In summing up the attitude of the whites toward ne- 
gro education, toward the teachers, and in regard to rent- 
ing houses, General Terry says: "In some places the peo- 
ple cordially approve it (the education of the freedmen). 
Many have taken part in it. In other places the reverse is 
the case— some persons coming to teach the negroes have 
not been permitted to rent a place, either for school or per- 
sonal occupation, and it has been reported to me that 
teachers sent to teach the blacks have been treated with 
great contempt and in some places threatened." 9 

Many of the worthy teachers were misunderstood by 
the white people amongst whom they had come to labor. 
They therefore were not welcome from reasons before men- 
tioned. Others of these teachers without tact and some- 



7Qen. Terry's Report, Globe 1865-66, pp. 1833-34. 

8P. 46, House Document No. 120, 1st Ses. 39th Congress; p. 278, Ku 
Klux Conspiracy, 2d Session 42d Congress, 1872. 

SGlobe 1865-66, pp. 1833-84. 



96 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

times without character became involved in difficulties with 
the whites of the community. Generally these brawls were 
not traced to their true origin, but were reported by the 
teachers and agents of the Bureau as marks of hostility to 
the education and elevation of the late slaves. Owing to 
the agitation of the public mind, the most insignificant dis- 
turbance was magnified into a riot. These outrages were 
the capital of the "scalawag," the "carpetbagger" and the 
turbulent negro politician on the one side; on the other 
side, some of the whites industriously spread abroad reports 
of the wildest plans and wrong-doing of the freedmen and 
their partisans. Chagrin at defeat, hatred toward the con- 
querors, hostility to the proposed new status of the negro, 
and opposition to the form and spirit of the education 
being given the freedmen, disqualified, in a large measure, 
the whites from correctly estimating the teachers and the 
schools. On the other hand the Bureau agents and teach- 
ers interpreted any opposition to the teachers or their 
methods as hostility to any form of education for negroes. 

It is therefore very difficult to determine what part of 
the whites were in principle opposed to negro education; 
yet it is certain that a considerable element, generally of 
the more ignorant class, was unwilling to see the negroes 
educated or elevated in any way. 

The State Legislature in its session of 1865-66 and of 
1866-67 made no new provision for the education of either 
whites or blacks. The State was so impoverished by the 
war that it could hardly be expected to attempt the inaugu- 
ration of a public free school system for either race at that 
time. It is, of course, impossible to affirm positively just 
what would have been the policy of the whites in regard to 
negro education if they had been left to solve this problem. 
The fact that the Legislature in an act concerning appren- 
tices, passed January 30, 1866, provided that every minor 
bound an apprentice should be taught not only some busi- 
ness or trade, but also, "reading, writing and common 



Negroes and Their Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 97 

arithmetic including the rule of three," indicates clearly 
that the Legislature intended that in the future there 
should be no difference between the education given a 
white and black apprentice. By this act the fifth section 
of chapter one hundred and twenty-seven of the Code of 
1860 was so amended as to put all apprentices, regardless 
of color, on absolutely the same footing in regard to educa- 
tion as in all other respects. 

The passage of the Eeconstruction Acts of 1867 took 
this matter out of the hands of the whites. Most of the 
thoughtful people had felt from the close of the war that 
some form of education was necessary to enable the freed- 
men to take their new places in society. This feeling was 
constantly growing amongst all classes. It is, therefore, 
probable that liberal provisions would soon have been made 
by the Legislature for their education. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Apprentice Laws in Virginia. 

It has been shown how completely society was revolu- 
tionized and the home life of the negroes broken up by the 
war. Thousands of negroes had deserted their children. 
Many young negroes, imitating their elders, refused work 
as unbecoming freemen, and lived by begging and stealing. 
Many white parents had died leaving their children home- 
less and friendless. There was during the years of 1865 
and 1866 a larger number of homeless, idle children in Vir- 
ginia than at any other period in her history. These young 

"Acts 1865-66, p. 86. 



98 Negroes and Jheir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

people were growing up in want and vice. Most of them, 
with no regular labor, were coming to manhood and woman- 
hood without any trade or any disposition to support them- 
selves. For several years after the war many young 
negroes were fed, clothed, and sheltered by the Freedmen's 
Bureau and the army around whose headquarters great 
throngs were congregated in idleness. 

The army officers repeatedly urged the people of Vir- 
ginia to adopt some fair system of apprenticeship. May 
5, 1865, General Halleck declared that, "For minors, not 
cared for by their parents, apprentice system will be intro- 
duced as early as practicable." 1 The press of the State and 
the army officers considered the proper education and train- 
ing of orphans and homeless minors one of the most serious 
questions before the people. 2 The army officers and Freed- 
men's Bureau agents feared that the people of Virginia 
would devise some apprentice system by which they would 
receive the benefits of slavery without its form. This lack 
of confidence in the sincerity of the people in dealing fairly 
with the negroes rendered more difficult the efforts to find 
homes and employment for the young negroes. July 15, 
1865, Gen. O. O. Howard issued orders to the agents of 
the Freedmen's Bureau that they should supervise the con- 
tracts of freedmen, but in no instance should "apprentice- 
ship or any substitute for slavery" be allowed. 3 This order 
was intended to prohibit only abuses of the apprentice sys- 
tem by which a person might conceivably be enslaved for a 
number of years; yet it, in its actual influence, discouraged 
all attempts to apprentice minors even on the most liberal 
terms. 

!P. 1091, Serial 97, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. 

2 Lynchburg Virginian, November 4, 1865; Richmond Times, May 15, 
August 19, 1865; p. 1216 Serial 97, Official Records. General Howard, 
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, ordered that, "State laws with 
regard to apprenticeship will be recognized by this Bureau, provided they 
make no distinction of color." Whig, October 6, 1865. 

2See Geueral Howard's Order, Richmond Times, July 15, 1865- 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 99 

In some of the ''Cotton States" during the summer of 
1865, there was some talk of the "gradual emancipation" 
plan and an "apprentice" plan, the purpose of which was 
to mitigate the bad effects of "immediate emancipation" of 
all the slaves. These plans never found any support in 
Virginia. The Eichmond Times of May 15, 1865, discuss- 
ing them, says, "The edifice of our future greatness can 
be built on free labor, and Virginia has something better in 
store for her than to play the dry nurse for two or three 
hundred thousand negroes for the next half century." 

Nevertheless it was realized by all that something had 
to be done to teach the throngs of idle young negroes hab- 
its of industry and force them to earn their bread. Novem- 
ber 4, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian says, "Apprentice- 
ship to prevent young negroes from growing up in idleness 
and vagrancy should be a settled policy to be regulated 
upon some system of justice and fair dealings between both 
parties." It was generally felt that the two most important 
questions that would come before the Legislature to meet in 
December, 1865, would be the vagrant and minor negro 
questions. 

The Code of 1860 provided for "binding out" or "ap- 
prenticing minors under certain conditions." 4 It may be 
well to remark that nearly all the apprentices prior to 1860 
were white, as there was in the whole State only a com- 
paratively small number of free negroes. The word 
"master" as used in the statute of 1860 was not under- 
stood to imply any ownership of the "apprentice" or 
"bound person," but was a survival from the time when 
all men who held "apprentices" or "bound persons" were 
masters of the trade or calling which the apprentice was to 
be taught. It has been said that the use of the word 
"master" in the statutes of 1866 in regard to apprentices 
indicates a purpose on the part of the Legislature to place 



■•Code of Virginia, pp. 585-587. 



100 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

the "bound person" in the relation of a slave to his em- 
ployer. Such is not the case, for in every instance in 
which the word "master" occurs in the Acts of 1866 and 
1867 it is taken from the Code of 1860, which was enacted 
to regulate the relation of "master'' and "apprentice" 
when almost all the apprentices were white. It has never 
been claimed that there was any desire to enslave or wrong 
the white apprentices. 

An "apprentice," according to the statutes of Vir- 
ginia, was a minor bound until twenty-one years of age in 
the case of a male, and to eighteen years in the case of a 
female, to perform services for a master, and to receive in 
turn instruction in his trade or occupation. There was 
nothing servile in apprenticeship, as will be seen by an 
examination of the statutes regulating and defining the 
rights and duties of both master and apprentice. The 
Constitution adopted at Alexandria in the spring of 1864 
declares: "Courts of competent jurisdiction may appren- 
tice minors of African descent on like conditions provided 
by law for apprenticing white children." 

The Legislature of "restored Virginia" at Alexandria 
enacted no legislation touching this question. This ex- 
plicit constitutional provision was sufficient, since the 
Code of 1860 defined on what conditions white children 
could be apprenticed. When the Legislature of Virginia 
met at Richmond in December, 1865, it took up the minor 
negro question. After nearly two mouths it was decided 
to make only one change in the "master and apprentice" 
statutes of the Code of 1860. By this Code the master was 
not required to teach a "free negro" apprentice "reading, 
writing and arithmetic," which were required to be taught 
white apprentices. With this single exception the laws 
regulating white and black apprentices were the same. 
This section in the Code of 1860 read as follows: "The 
writing by which any minor is bound an apprentice, shall 
specify his age and what art, trade or business he is to be 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 101 

taught. The master, whether it is expressly provided 
therein or not, shall be bound to teach the same, and, 
unless the apprentice be a free negro, shall be bound to 
teach him reading, writing and common arithmetic, includ- 
ing the rule of three." 5 It was amended January 30, 1866, 
so as to read: u The writing by which any minor is bound 
an apprentice shall specify his age and what art, trade or 
business he is to be taught. The master, whether it is 
expressly provided therein or not, shall be bound to teach 
the same, and shall also be bound to teach him reading, 
writing and common arithmetic, including the rule of 
three." 6 

This was the only change made in the apprentice laws 
by the Legislature in its session of 1865-66. By this 
amendment white and black apprentices were put abso- 
lutely on an equality. 

January 28, 1867, at its second session, the Legislature 
passed "an act concerning the authority of employers over 
minors in certain cases" which read as follows: 7 "That 
whenever a minor is held to service or labor of any kind, 
for a period not less than one month, the employer may 
exercise the same authority, control and discipline over the 
said minor as are now exercised by a master over an ap- 
prentice, unless it shall be otherwise agreed in the contract 
for the employment of said minor." 

The purpose of this act was to give the employer the 
same rights to control and discipline a minor under con- 
tract for a longer period than one month as were legally 
exercised by the master over an apprentice. This statute 
conferred on the employer no right to overwork, under- 
feed or otherwise abuse the minor, since the "master and 
apprentice" laws defined very strictly the rights and obli- 



5 Code of Virginia, p. 585. 
«Acts 1865-66, p. 86. 
'Acts 1866-67, p. 567. 



102 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

gations of master and apprentice and provided legal reme- 
dies for the redress of any grievance of either party. 8 

The letter of this act applies to whites and blacks with- 
out distinction; yet it was enacted to give white employers 
more complete control of the young freedmen, who, ac- 
cording to all accounts, were at that time a very unreliable 
class of laborers, and very little inclined to respect con- 
tracts and the rights of their employers. 

In 1865 and 1866 the young negroes were constantly 
making complaints to the agents of the Freedmen' s Bureau 
that their white employers were "infringing upon" their 
liberty by "whipping" them or using "harsh language" to 
them. Often the Bureau agents gave a ready ear to these 
reports of outrages, however poorly attested. Eespectable 
men who had "infringed upon the liberty" of youthful 
"Afro- Americans" by using a switch on their backs or by 
not addressing them "politely" were notified to appear and 
confront their accusers before the Freedmen' s Court. This 
act of January 28, 1867, had a tendency to diminish the 
number of such cases by legalizing so far as a State 
law, at that time, could legalize anything, the power of the 
employer to discipline his young employee. 

This statute conferred on the employer no unusual 
power, but simply stated that he could lawfully exercise 
upon a minor, under contract for labor for a longer period 
than one month, the rights of a master over an apprentice, 
unless it was provided in the contract for such service that 
he was to enjoy no such right of control. It does not ap- 
pear that this act was ever abused, since by its own terms 
it did not go into effect until May 1, 1867. Before that 
time the Reconstruction Acts had reduced Virginia to a 
military district and had suspended to a great extent the 
operation of all the State laws. 



8Code of Virginia, pp. 585-587. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 103 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Negro Marriages. 

The immediate effects of emancipation on the marital 
relations of the negroes was disastrous. The results of the 
war had freed them not only from slavery but also from all 
forms of restraint, marriage among the rest. Hundreds 
and thousands of marriages were dissolved at once without 
formality, and new ones formed also without formality. 9 
Some negroes who had been "refugeed" away from home 
on the approach of the Union forces or who found them- 
selves for any reason separated from their wives, decided, 
at the close of the war, that it was "cheaper" to marry 
where they were than to return to their old homes to their 
former wives. 

Thoughtful people felt that this laxity was a serious 
peril to the future of the black race. The army officers 
requested clergymen and all others empowered to celebrate 
the rite of matrimony to call the attention of the negroes to 
the propriety of regular marriage. The Freedmen's 
Bureau made vigorous efforts to "re-establish the sanctity 
of the marriage relation amongst the freed people." 1 The 
various churches strove to impress them with the necessity 
of fidelity to their marital obligations and urged them as 
Christians and freedmen not to abuse their liberty by run- 
ning into licentiousness and promiscuous intercourse. The 
efforts of the army officers, Freedmen's agents, and minis- 
ters were fairly effective. 2 

SRuffln, The Negro as a Political and Social Factor, pp. 16, 17. 

"Gen. Halleck's Order, Serial 97, Official Records of the War of the 
Rebellion, p. 1221. 

iMessages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67, p. 665. 

2 Rev. S. A. Harris, a colored minister, applied to the Court of Hust- 
ings in Richmond for license authorizing him to perform the marriage 



104 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

Before the war there had been no legal provision for 
the marriage of negroes in Virginia. No license was issued 
for their marriage and no record was made of the simple 
ceremony by which they were declared man and wife. 
These marriages were solemnized by negro ministers and 
were respected with a considerable degree of fidelity. As 
has already been said, these unions were dissolved with 
great recklessness at the close of the war. The Legislature 
felt that something must be done to give greater force and 
sanctity to the domestic relation among negroes. February 
22, 1866, an act was passed providing for the marriage of 
colored persons in the future on the same conditions as 
were prescribed for whites. 3 By this act a license issued 
by a county or corporation clerk was necessary. After the 
marriage a record of the whole proceeding was to be made 
in the clerk's office. 

During the years 1865 and 1866 the military authori- 
ties and the Freedmen's Bureau agents had done much to 
encourage the negroes to marry according to prescribed 
forms, and had made a record of all such marriages as had 
been solemnized by their authority or acknowledged in 
their presence. Many negroes had been married under the 
direction of these officers. Many others who had been 
"cohabiting as man and wife'' for years appeared before 
them and on the payment of a fee of twenty-five cents were 
given a certificate of their relation as husband and wife. 
In April, 1867, the General Assembly instructed the Gov- 
ernor to obtain from the United States authorities the 
records of all such marriages and acknowledgments by 
negroes and to cause them to be deposited with the clerks 



ceremony, but was refused on the ground that there was no law for grant- 
ing such license. Enquirer, Nov. 15, 1865. The Freedmen's Court in 
Richmond authorized the issuance of license to negroes wishing to get 
married. Enquirer, Dec. 11, 1865. 

SActs 1865-66, pp. 85-86. 



Negroes and Jheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 105 

of the several counties of the State ' 'to preserve evidences 
for legitimatizing the offspring of such marriages." 4 

By these acts all marriages before the war were legal- 
ized; the children of such unions were declared legitimate. 
The records of marriages contracted in the unsettled period 
following the war were preserved, and the marriage of col- 
ored persons in the future was provided for on the same 
conditions as were prescribed for whites. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Insurrection. 

During the war the conduct of the slaves toward their 
masters' families was in the highest degree praiseworthy. 
At the close of the war there was very little fear that the 
negroes would make insurrection against the whites. Only 
two uprisings of any importance had ever occurred in the 
State; namely, Gabriel's attempt near Eichmond in 1800, 
which amounted to little; and Nat Turner's in Southamp- 
ton county in 1831, in which fifty-five persons lost their 
lives. 5 These occurrences excited temporarily great terror. 
In 1860 a generation had passed without another such 
attempt, and the rural whites dwelt in confident security 
in the midst of a colored population numerically greatly 
superior in a large part of the State. 

Before the war it had been feared that horrible ex- 
cesses would follow the immediate emancipation of the 



<Acts 1866-67, p. 951. 

^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 169. The number Blain is variously 
reported. 



106 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

slaves. Their exemplary conduct during the war had 
almost entirely dissipated these fears. In a few sections 
there was, in 1865 and 1866, some apprehension that the 
armed freedinen would rise against the whites. General 
Terry was urged to disarm them, which he declined to do. 6 
No uprising followed. There were frequent collisions be- 
tween white and black individuals, but there was no insur- 
rection of one race against the other. 

The Code of 1860 provided the death penalty for incit- 
ing negroes to insurrection. 7 There was no penalty for 
inciting whites against negroes. The Legislature, Febru- 
ary 9, 1866, enacted: "That the fourth section of chapter 
one hundred and ninety of the Code of Virginia for eighteen 
hundred and sixty be amended and re-enacted so as to read 
as follows, to wit: 

"§4. If any person shall conspire with another to incite 
the colored population of the State to make insurrection, 
by acts of violence and war, against the white population, 
or to incite the white population of the State to make 
insurrection, by acts of violence and war, against the 
colored population, he shall, whether such insurrection be 
made or not, be punished by confinement in the peniten- 
tiary for not less than five nor more than ten years.'- 8 

This act repealed all special punishments for inciting 
negro insurrections, and provided a penalty of from five to 
ten years in the penitentiary for inciting either whites or 
blacks to insurrection. The comparative mildness of the 
penalty indicates that the Legislature apprehended little 
danger from uprisings of one race against the other. 



6 General Terry's testimony, Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 1834. 
7 Code of Virginia, p. 783. 
»Acts 1865-66, p. 81. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 107 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Separate Churches for Negroes. 

Before the war it was unlawful for negroes to meet for 
religious worship conducted by a colored person unless a 
white man was present. 9 This statute was frequently dis- 
regarded. There were niaDy negro preachers who were 
respected by their masters and who exerted a wholesome 
influence on the slaves. They were illiterate but fervent 
and frequently pious. It was also unlawful for negroes to 
assemble for the purpose of being instructed in reading and 
writing. Nocturnal meetings of any kind were unlawful. 
After the war the whites offered no objection to the educa- 
tion of negroes or to religious meetings conducted by 
negroes without any supervision of whites. 

Almost all slave owners gave more or less attention to 
the religious and moral growth of their own slaves. The 
plantation of every pious master had its Sunday school, in 
which the negroes were instructed by enthusiastic itinerant 
white preachers and frequently by the pious women of the 
family. Many negroes were members of the same churches 
as the whites. A place was always reserved for them, 
sometimes in the body of the church, but more often in the 
galleries. In some places separate churches were built for 
them by subscription of their masters. Many of the ablest 
white ministers preached to these negro congregations from 

time to time. 

There were no separate ecclesiastical oiganizations for 
blacks. Most of the negro church members were Baptists, 
but they were not found in that church alone. After the 
close of the war most of the colored members withdrew 



9Code, p. 810. 

"Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, Vol. I, p. 119. 



108 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

from the Baptist Church and formed a separate organization 
with their own church buildings and preachers. 1 In this 
they were encouraged by the whites. Before the close of 
1866 the colored Baptist churches of the South formed a 
number of associations which put themselves in connection 
with the Northern Baptist societies. In the American Baptist 
(African) Missionary Convention which met in Richmond 
in August, 1866, nearly all the Southern States were repre- 
sented.' 2 Schools were maintained at Alexandria, Cul- 
peper, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg, Portsmouth and 
Richmond, in which special attention was given to train- 
ing colored ministers. 3 

The General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian 
Church, November 15, 1866, considered the relation of the 
freedmen of that church to the white members. In the 
various synods throughout the South there were earnest 
discussions in regard to the fraternal standing of the col- 
ored men in the Presbyterian Church. By some it was 
urged that negroes, from the nature of Christianity, were 
entitled to become deacons, ruling elders, or ministers of 
God, and that in the church sessions and assemblies they 
were entitled to "perfect equality." Others warmly op- 
posed this view as leading to miscegenation of the races. 4 

In the first general conference of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South, after the war, in April, 1866, at New 
Orleans, it was provided that the negroes could be organ- 
ized into separate congregations and have their own preach- 
ers, presiding elders, and other officers. 8 

In reconstruction days the negro preachers were prom- 



iPeyton, History of Augusta County, p. 88 ; pamphlet by F. G. Ruffin 
(Randolph & English, Richmond). 

2 American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 57. 

3 American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867, p. 87. 

* American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 625. 

s American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 491. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 109 

inent spokesmen of their race. Few of the blacks could 
read, all were excited and inquisitive about their future 
condition. The oratory of the radical leaders and colored 
preachers was the chief source of political information and 
knowledge that they trusted. The ministers were confi- 
dent, fervid, and wordy. Many of them were immoral 
and neglected the Gospel for politics and sociology. 

Within a few years after the war practically all of the 
negroes withdrew from all the white ecclesiastical organiza- 
tions, and formed numerous denominations entirely inde- 
pendent of white control or direct influence. A great 
multiplicity of church societies sprang up in each of these 
sects. The social side of church life was highly developed. 
The church building with its festivals, social meetings, and 
revivals became the social center of the colored community. 
The members contributed liberally to the building of the 
churches and to the support of their ministers and church 
enterprises. 



CtLAPTEE XVII. 

Effects of the Eeconsteuction Acts. 

The Eeconstruction Act of Congress, March 2, 1867, 
was an attempt of the radicals to force the Southern people 
to recognize the civil and political equality of the colored 
race. This act virtually destroyed the government of Vir- 
ginia and changed the State into Military District Number 
One, of which General John M. Schofield of the United 
States army was made commander. 6 The negroes were 

6ln the main Gen. Schofield discharged the duties of his office with 
tact, and sympathy. Through him Virginia was spared much that ; other 
states suffered. See his autobiography, Forty-six Years m the Army, 
Chapter XXI, for his account of his administration. 



110 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

enfranchised and the last vestiges of their inferiority, civil 
and political, were wiped out by Federal legislation. 

It was felt by many that the traditional influence of 
the old masters would lead the enfranchised freedmen to 
vote with the whites. 7 John M. Botts favored enfranchise- 
ment of the negroes as right in principle but opposed it as 
inexpedient since he believed they would vote with their 
old Democratic masters. 

Negroes attempted to vote in a municipal election in 
Alexandria early in March, 1867. 8 About fourteen hun- 
dred votes were presented by the negroes and were declined 
by the election officers. This denial was severely criticised 
in the North and in Congress. The whites withheld the 
ballots from the blacks as long as it was possible for them 
to do so. After Congress had enfranchised the freedmen 
many of the leading newspapers urged the whites to strive 
to maintain their influence with them and thereby prevent 
their falling under the leadership of the radicals who had 
for some time been growing in influence with them. 9 

Many of the negroes announced that they would vote 
with the whites. In most cases they were ostracised and 
intimidated frequently by the women of their race or by 
radical organizations such as the Union League. Demo- 
cratic negroes were denied membership in many churches. 
It was feared that a general collision of the races would be 
precipitated by the ill advice of incendiaries and radical 
white leaders, amongst whom Eev. J. W. Hunnicutt, the 
editor of the radical newspaper, the Richmond "New Na- 
tion," and Judge Underwood, of the Federal Court, were 
very prominent and influential. 

'Richmond Dispatch, March 23, 1867, April 5, 1867; Whig, March 6, 23, 
April 1, 1867. 

8 Richmond Enquirer, March 8, 1867. 

SRichmond Enquirer, May 18, 21, 1867; Richmond Republic, July 6, 7, 
1865; Richmond Whig, April 1, 1867. 

ORichmond Enquirer, March 26, May 18, 1867 ; Dispatch, June 20, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? Ill 

The representative newspapers advised the negroes to 
remain friendly with their old masters and not allow them- 
selves to be ruined by talk and politics. 1 At the same 
time the white people were urged to explain to the negroes 
their rights and duties as voters, but it was everywhere 
felt that honest, conscientious citizens could not bid against 
Hunnicutt and the radicals for the vote of the negroes. 
The Union League was the chief agency by which the 
negroes were organized and pitted against the whites. 
This organization was peculiarly adapted to the character 
of the blacks. In it they were instructed in the privileges 
and duties of citizenship and special stress was laid on their 
obligation to oppose the whites and to support the Eepub- 
lican party which had given them the ballot. 2 It early 
became manifest that the negroes would vote solidly with 
the radicals. 3 More than ninety-three thousand blacks 
voted in the election in October, 1867; only six hundred 
and thirty-eight voted with the white conservatives. 

The Freedmeu's Bureau officials urged all negroes to 
register and vote for delegates to the convention which was 
soon to be called to frame a State constitution that would 
give the negroes full civil and political equality. 4 Almost 
every male negro of legal age promptly registered. Army 
officers and Bureau agents were given the preference in 
making appointments of registrars. 

The whites were apathetic. Many neglected to regis- 
ter although the leading men and press urged all to regis- 
ter and vote. 6 Many were so disgusted at negro suffrage 
that they declared that they would never vote again. 6 



iRichmond Enquirer, April 2, 27, 1867; Whig, April 1, 1867. 

2Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming. 

3Richmond Enquirer, May 24, 1867. 

^Richmond Enquirer, June 1, 1867. 

SRichmond Enquirer, June 17, 1867; Whig, March 7, 1867. 

^Richmond Dispatch, April 5, 1867. 



112 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

This was very unfortunate as it made it easier for the radi- 
cals and negroes to dominate the State for several years. 
About forty-four thousand registered white voters neglected 
to vote in the election of October, 1867. Congressional 
acts excluded many Confederate soldiers from voting and 
almost all of them from holding office, since an officer was 
required to take the "test oath" that he had not engaged 
in armed revolt against the United States, or given "aid or 
comfort" to the Confederate cause. 

Many declared that negroes were not eligible to office 
under the Eeconstruction Acts. 7 The colored inhabitants 
of Alexandria had nominated candidates for office March 
1, 1867. 8 In the summer of the same year a considerable 
number of them were nominated and in October twenty-five 
were elected members of the Constitutional Convention. 
Their right to hold office was soon generally recognized. 

The passage of the Eeconstruction Acts in the spring 
of 1867 encouraged anew the negroes to hope for the con- 
fiscation and division of the lands of the Confederates 
among the late slaves. In September, 1866, * 'radical emis- 
saries" in Buckingham and adjoining counties urged the 
negroes not to work for the whites and to assert their claims 
to the land. 9 All confiscatory schemes were ardently sup- 
ported by most of the blacks. Nevertheless most of the 
Eepublican leaders in Virginia in the summer of 1867 dis- 
couraged the negroes in their clamor for confiscation. 
Many farms occupied by freedmen were restored to the 
owners in a comparatively short time after the war. 

It was more difficult to secure negro labor after March, 
1867, than it had been before, inasmuch as about all negroes 
gave themselves up to politics. After registration began 



^Richmond Dispatch, April 13, July 11, 1867. 

^Richmond Dispatch, March 6, 1867. 

"Richmond Whig, Sept. 11, 1866. 

°Richmond Enquirer, April 18, 1867 ; Dispatch, July 8, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 113 

they became more demoralized than they had ever been 
before that time. 

Encounters between whites and blacks became more 
frequent. In May an agitator was arrested on the charge 
of inciting the negroes to acts of violence and insurrection. 
He urged them to assert their claims to all the rights and 
privileges enjoyed by white people in any Northern state, 
including the right to ride in street cars and to sit in any 
churches and theatres. Negro riots such as occurred in 
Richmond in May, 1867, alarmed the people. It was 
feared that the relations of the races would continually 
grow worse. 1 There was much reckless talk. A delegate 
to the Philadelphia Convention in September, 1866, said 
that the negroes must be drilled and organized for fighting 
the whites. 2 He prophesied a '-rich San Domingo" in the 
South when "the rebels attempt to rule the blacks." Yet 
many influential negroes strove to avert any ill feeling be- 
tween the races. 3 The relation of the races became more 
strained and unsatisfactory than at any previous time in 
the history of the State. 

Many white men felt that it was not prudent or patri- 
otic to stand haughtily apart and allow the negro voters to 
fall under the influence of radicals and self-seekers to the 
hurt of every interest of society. They denied the wisdom 
or constitutionality of the means by which the negroes had 
been made citizens and voters but considered it wise to 
recognize actual conditions and to strive to neutralize as 
far as possible the baneful influence of selfish leaders on 
the negroes. These whites soon found it impossible to co- 
operate with the black voters who suspected their motives 
and implicitly trusted the "scalawags," "carpetbaggers," 
and their own leaders. 

Richmond Enquirer, May 11, 1867. 
2 Whig, Sept. 6, 1866. 
SEnquirer, May 10, 1867. 



114 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

A wide difference of opinion appeared as to what 
course the General Assembly should pursue. Some urged 
that it should call a constitutional convention and take 
steps to put into effect the provisions of the Eeconstruction 
Acts. A large and respectable group opposed this course 
and favored a policy of "passivity." 4 They argued that 
the people should avail themselves of the delay allowed by 
the law in hope that the State might yet be spared the 
shame and humiliation of universal negro suffrage imposed 
upon it by the Federal Government. The newspaper dis- 
cussions of this question were very acrimonious. 

A State convention, called by the Eepublican Commit- 
tee, met in Eichmond April 17, 1867. 6 Of the two hundred 
and ten delegates present one hundred and sixty were ne- 
groes. About one half of the State was represented. Very 
radical resolutions were adopted. Confiscation was de- 
manded by almost all the negro delegates. Some of the 
speeches were of a very inflammatory character. The 
negroes at this time were completely under the influence 
of Hunnicutt. Many respectable Eepublicans were dissatis- 
fied with the radical policy of Hunnicutt and the negroes. 6 

About ihis time efforts were made to form a Eepub- 
lican party in Virginia less radical than the Hunnicutt or- 
ganization. The Eichmond Whig became the advocate of 
this movement. Late in April a convention in Petersburg 
formulated a platform which, it was hoped, was radical 
enough to meet the approval of the North and not too rad- 
ical to win the support of the conservative Eepublicans of 
Virginia. 7 This platform did not receive much popular 

*The Enquirer was the leader of the "passivity" group. Most of the 
other leading newspapers favored a prompt acceptance of the provisions 
of the Reconstruction Acts. 

»Enquirer and Whig, April 18, 1867. 

•Whig, April 5, 1867. 

This platform demands * * "that the political power of the State 
shall henceforth be possessed and exercised by white and black alike ; 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 115 

support. Governor Peirpont, John M. Botts and other 
strong men had always denied the regularity and legiti- 
macy of the Richmond Convention. The Petersburg Con- 
vention accepted Botts as leader of the movement against 
Hunnicutt and the extreme radical organization. 

A call for a new convention at Charlottesville to 
organize the Republican party in the State was signed by 
more than three hundred men. 8 Many of these were old 
line Whigs of character and influence. Hunnicutt and the 
radicals ignored this call. 

The Reconstruction Committee in Washington now 
intervened. Through its influence the ' 'Union Leagues" 
of some of the great cities in the North undertook to bring 
about harmony between the radicals and conservatives. In 
June, 1867, about fifty men representing the two factions 
met in Richmond to try to bring harmony amongst the 
friends of the negro. Judge Underwood, Senator Wilson, 
John M. Botts, J. W. Hunnicutt, and John Hawxhurst 
were prominent in this meeting, 9 It was decided to recall 
the call for the Charlottesville convention and to call a 
convention at Richmond, August 1, to formulate a party 
platform. Richmond was at this time the center of radical 
influence. On the whole, Hunnicutt and the radicals had 
triumphed over Botts and the conservatives. 

About this time a movement for coalition between the 
whites and the blacks appeared in the State. July I many 
of the leading citizens, socially and politically, of Albe- 
marle county, met in Charlottesville to consider the wis- 



* * that a new constitution shall be framed which shall provide that all 
men, white or black, without reference to previous conditions of servi- 
tude, shall be perfectly equal before the laws, both in respect to political 
privileges and power and of civil rights ; and that all laws creating distinc- 
tions or differences of any sort between persons of different races shall be 
unconstitutional, null, and void." 

SEnquirer, May 21, 1867. 

'Enquirer, June 19, 1867. 



116 Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

dom and practicability of "co-operation" with the conven- 
tion called to meet in Richmond, August 1.° They ex- 
pressed a desire to "co-operate" with the Republican party, 
and forty-six delegates were appointed to represent them 
in the Richmond convention. Practically all these "co- 
operators" had been active and consistent supporters of 
the Confederacy, and would have won for the Republican 
party the support and confidence of much of the best white 
element if they had become identified with that organiza- 
tion. Other counties decided to "co-operate," and sent as 
delegates some of their most distinguished citizens. 

The "co-operators" accepted negro suffrage as an 
accomplished fact. They hoped to secure the support of 
the freedmen and to leaven the radicalism of the Republi- 
can party. In such a coalition the leaders would have 
been white men. This plan did not commend itself to the 
negroes, who demanded a "fair division of all offices," 
and declared that wherever two men were elected or ap- 
pointed to office one of them must be a negro. 1 Hunnicutt 
and the radicals did not welcome the overtures of the 
"co-operators." 

The convention met in the African church, in Rich- 
mond, on the appointed day. The negroes thronged around 
the church as early as seven o'clock in the morning and 
poured in and filled the building when the doors were 
opened at eleven. About two thousand negroes, Mr. Botts, 
and the white "co-operator" delegates were left outside. 
This convention was made up of negroes, except the fifty 
white delegates who had attended the April convention. 
Hunnicutt addressed the "mass convention" in the church. 
He said that the only work before the meeting was to 
"endorse" the April platform. 2 It was promptly "en- 

"Enquirer, July 3, 1867. 
^Charlottesville Chronicle, July 2, 1867. 
2Enquirer, August 2, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 117 

dorsed." A motion to allow Botts to address the conven- 
tion was lost almost unanimously. 

Many of the country negro delegates were not admitted 
into the church. These, with the throng of negroes around 
the church, repaired to the Capitol grounds and were ad- 
dressed by John Hawxhurst, a bitter radical. The "co- 
operators" were huddled together on the outskirts of the 
throng. Botts and the conservative Bepublicans were 
ignored. The "co-operation" movement had failed. The 
negroes had definitely declined the overtures of the whites 
and committed all to the radical leaders. This triumph of 
the radicals and negroes disgusted and discouraged the 
whites, who had hoped that the negroes could be induced 
to accept the leadership of their former masters. After 
this some of the Union Leagues refused to admit white men 
as members. 3 

An election was ordered for October 18-21 to deter- 
mine whether a constitutional convention should be called 
and to elect delegates to this convention if the popular vote 
should favor it. The campaign was energetically con- 
ducted by the radicals. Many of the negroes gave them- 
selves up completely to attendance upon political meetings 
and discussions of politics. Many of them were nominated 
for office, about one- third of the radical Bepublican nomi- 
nees being black. In Bichmond the radicals nominated 
three whites and two blacks. 

The equality of all men before the courts, equal civil 
and political rights for both races, free schools for all 
classes and colors, and the right of negroes to hold any 
office were leading features of the radical platform. 4 

The total registration of voters was nearly two hun- 
dred and twenty-six thousand; of this number about one 
hundred and twenty thousand were white and almost one 



s Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by Fleming, No. 3, p. 4. 
♦Enquirer, April, 19, 1867. 



118 Negroes and Their Ireatment in Virginta,, ^o65-67 

hundred and six thousand were colored. Nevertheless in 
the election the blacks cast over seventeen thousand more 
ballots than the whites. About forty -four thousand regis- 
tered white voters had failed to vote, but only about twelve 
thousand seven hundred registered negroes remained away 
from the polls. Of the one hundred and five delegates to 
the Constitutional Convention, the radicals elected seventy- 
two, of whom twenty-five were negroes, and twenty-seven 
were from other states and foreign countries. Ouly about 
six hundred and thirty-eight negroes voted with the whites. 
This sbows how completely the radicals had won them, 
despite the efforts of their old masters to influence their 
ballot. There was a majority of about forty -five thousand 
in favor of calliDg a constitutional convention. The radi- 
cals were jubilant and confident of their future. The 
negroes were almost beyond control with joy at their 
triumph. The white conservatives were dismayed by their 
overwhelming defeat at the polls. 

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Richmond 
December 3, 1867. This was the first time in the history 
of the State that negroes sat as members of a legislative 
body. Dr. Thomas Bayne, Willis A. Hodges, and Lewis 
Lindsay were the most prominent and influential negroes in 
the convention. 

The State had been revolutionized. The old political 
leaders were absent. The old dominant class had lost con- 
trol. Negroes and their radical friends had met to frame a 
Constitution for the Old Dominion. 

Many negroes insisted that all social distinctions of 
race should be removed by law and custom. In Nanse- 
mond county, in June, 1867, a negro meeting advocated 
negro equality in every respect and female suffrage. 6 Lewis 
Lindsay, a colored leader, in a speech at Charlottesville in 
July, 1867, claimed social equality as a right of the 

8 Richmond Dispatch, June 18, 1867. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-ti? 119 

negroes. 6 Similar demands were made by negro leaders 
and radicals about this time in many parts of the State. 
The editor of the Petersburg "Index" is quoted as saying: 
"We have never seen, nor do we know, why a white man 
who wishes to marry a colored woman, or a white woman 
who wishes to marry a colored man, should be restricted 
in the caprice." 7 

It was claimed by some that the Petersburg platform 
favored intermarriage between the races. 8 Nevertheless 
many negroes opposed any agitation for social equality, 
and were content for the time being to make sure of civil 
and political equality and to trust the future for other 
privileges. 9 

The whites feared that the radical doctrinaires would 
attempt by some means to enforce social equality as well as 
political and civil equality. Social equality of the races 
was, of course, never more than a dream of radicals and 
enthusiasts without the slightest possibility of realiza- 
tion. Most of the white people ceaselessly fought it in 
every form and tendency. 

Civil and political equality of the negroes was guar- 
anteed by the constitution framed by the convention that 
assembled in Eichmond, December, 1867. The two races 
continued to stand apart socially. The instinct of the 
white race is against social equality with blacks. Neither 
defeat in war nor triumph of radicalism in peace could 
overcome the determination of the whites to resist social 
equality and to preserve racial integrity. 



GCharlottesville Chronicle, July 2, 1867. 
^Richmond Enquirer, May 6, 1867. 
^Richmond Enquirer, May 4, 1867. 
»Whig, May 28, 1867. 
°RichmoDd Enquirer, May 6-10, 1867. 



120 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

CHAPTEE XVIII. 

Summary and Conclusion. 

The negroes in the part of Virginia west of the Blue 
Eidge were only about fifteen per cent, of the entire popu- 
lation of that section. They were considerably in the 
majority in the rest of the State. The negro problem has, 
therefore, never been so serious a question in the Valley and 
Southwest as in the Piedmont, Southside and Tidewater 

sections. 

In 1865 the people of Virginia, almost to a man, ac- 
cepted the unconditional emancipation of the slaves as the 
most patent result of the war. The whites did not hold 
the negroes responsible for the events of the war or their 
emancipation. The negroes at once asserted their freedom 
and for a few years were greatly demoralized by their 
changed condition. The Freedmen's Bureau agents, the 
Northern teachers, the "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" 
were, on the whole, disturbing forces and prolonged and 
aggravated the transitional period from slavery to settled 
freedom. 

During this period a system of free contract labor was 
developed. The effort to fix wages by common agreement 
amongst the farmers was a failure. There was little oppo- 
sition to renting or selling land to negroes. The negroes, 
however, did not, in most cases, prove successful renters. 
Considerable numbers of freedmen bought real estate in the 
two or three years immediately following the war. Colored 
men never experienced any difficulty in buying land if they 
had the money to pay for it. 

Business was prostrated; money was scarce; the num- 
ber of laborers was excessive; wages were therefore low. 

In the minds of the freedmen idleness and freedom 
were synonymous. The rather severe vagrancy laws enacted 



Negroes and 7heir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 121 

by the Legislature in 1866 were not attempts to re-enslave 
the negroes or to minimize their freedom but were intended 
only to check the vagrancy and put the idle freedmen to 
work. This statute was annulled by General Terry within 
a few days after its enactment. It is, therefore, impossi- 
ble to say what would have been its practical working; yet 
it is not probable that this vagrant act would have been 
seriously abused. On account of the vagrancy and unre- 
liability of negroes as laborers it was found necessary to 
enact a contract law. The provisions of this act were not 
severe, and the consequences to a negro of its violation 
were only indirect. Every vestige of the old slave laws 
was repealed in 1865 and 1866. 

The number of outrages on negroes in Virginia from 
1865 to 1867 was small. There were, however, many com- 
mon brawls and personal encounters between whites and 
blacks, but no more than were naturally to be expected in 
a populatiou of twelve hundred thousand, of whom five 
hundred thousand were excited and insolent freedmen. 
A considerable number of these brawls and contests arose 
from the insolence and insubordination of the negroes, 
which the whites would not tolerate. In disputes abont 
money or property the negroes never experienced any diffi- 
culty in securing full justice. In common cases of assault 
and battery and in more serious criminal cases white courts 
would not always convict white men, if it was alleged that 
the negro had been saucy or insolent toward his white as- 
sailant. The negroes were generally given something like 
the maximum legal penalties for such offenses as theft, 
burglary and arson. The case of Dr. Watson and a few 
others created the impression in the North that the courts 
of Virginia did not protect the freedmen. Such cases were 
in reality extremely rare. 

In the summer and fall of 1865, before the old free 
negro laws had been repealed, the negroes by common con- 
sent and the decisions of the courts came into about all the 



122 Negroes and Iheir Ireatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 

civil rights of white men. By the legislative acts of Jan- 
uary and February, 1866, all special punishments and 
court proceedings applicable to negroes were repealed; and 
they were thus put on an equality in this respect with 
white men. In 1866 they were, by act of the Legislature, 
declared competent witnesses in all cases in which the 
interest of any colored person was directly or indirectly 
involved. The whites were bitterly opposed to the enfran- 
chisement of the negroes, and accepted it only as it was 
forced upon them by the United States Government. 

A large majority of the whites favored the education 
of the negroes in such ways as would fit them to become 
more efficient laborers and artisans, but opposed both the 
method and aims of the Northern teachers who were teach- 
ing the negroes to expect full political rights and to oppose 
their former masters. 

The apprentice laws of this period were the old ap- 
prentice laws of the Code of 1860, so amended as to apply 
to whites and blacks alike. The Legislature declared legiti- 
mate the offspring of all unions of colored persons before 
the war, and provided for the marriage of negroes in the 
future on the same conditions as whites. 

From this survey of the condition of the negroes from 
1865 to 1867 it is seen that the relation of the whites and 
blacks was during that period about as cordial as could 
have been expected; that they were adapting themselves to 
their new conditions; that the feeling of confidence and good 
will between the two races, although temporarily shocked 
by the events attending emancipation, was reasserting itself 
during the first year following the close of the war; that 
the laws had been so amended and modified as to secure for 
the freedmen all the civil rights and the most important 
political rights enjoyed by the whites. 

The Reconstruction Acts enfranchising the negroes 
and the other Federal legislation in their interest destroyed 
the confidence and good feeling that had existed between 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 123 

the two races and arrayed them in a bitter contest for the 
political control of the State. In the election of October, 
1867, the negroes and radicals were successful. Of the one 
hundred and five delegates elected to frame a constitution 
for the State seventy-two were radicals. Of this number 
twenty-five were negroes. The blacks attained full civil 
and political equality but were unable to secure social 
equality. These struggles engendered political and racial 
passions and antipathies that have not subsided after a 
generation. 



124 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Public Records and Documents. 

Of the United States Government. 

Congressional Globe, 1864-67. 

Census Reports, 1860 and 1870. 

Reports of the Department of Agriculture. 

Annual Reports of the Secretary of War. 

Statutes of the United States. 

House Documents. 

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 

Messages and Documents of the United States Government, 1866-71. 

Ku Klux Report, (Report of the Joint Committee of Congress on 
the Conditions in the Late Insurrectionary States, submitted at 
the 2nd Session of the 42nd Congress, 1872). 

Of the State of Virginia. 

Code of 1860. 

Acts of the Restored Government, 1863-65, (Alexandria). 

Acts of General Assembly, 1865-67. 

Annual Reports of Virginia, 1870-71. 



Newspapers. 

Richmond Times. 
Richmond Enquirer. 
Richmond Dispatch. 
Lynchburg Virginian. 
Charlottesville Chronicle. 
Richmond Whig. 
The Republic. 



Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 125 



Historical Works and Compendia, Pamphlets, Etc. 

American Annual Cyclopcedia, Appleton & Co., New York. 

Tribune Almanac, New York. 

Blackwood's Magazine, American Edition, New York. 

Ruffln, F. G., The Negro as a Political and Social Factor, Rich- 
mond, 1888. 

Stuart, A. H. H., A Narrative of the Leading Events of the First 
Popular Movement in Virginia in 1865, to Re-establish Peaceful 
Relations between the Northern and Southern States, and of 
the Subsequent Efforts of "the Committee of Nine," in 1869. 

Page, Thomas N., Atlantic Monthly, September, 1901, Boston. The 
articles on Reconstruction in the Atlantic Monthly in 1901 are 
valuable studies of the different phases of the negro question. 

Bruce, Philip A., The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, New York, 
1889. 

Sommerville, C. W., A Dissertation on R. 6. Harper, Johns Hop- 
kins University, 1899. 

Woolley, E. C, The Reconstruction of Georgia, Columbia Univer- 
sity Press, 1901. 

Ballagh, J. C, History of Slavery in Virginia, Johns. Hopkins 
Press, 1902. 

Herbert, H. H, Why the Solid South. 

Blaine, J. G., Twenty Years in Congress, Norwich, Conn., 1884. 
Bancroft, F. A., The Negro in Politics, New York, 1885. 
"Waddell, Annals of Augusta County, Staunton, 1902. 
Peyton, J. L., History of Augusta County, Staunton, 1882. 
Dunning, W. A., The Civil War and Reconstruction, New York, 
1898. 

McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction, New York, 1901. 
Summers, L. P., History of Southwest Virginia, Richmond, 1903. 
Minor, J. B., Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, Richmond, 1875. 
Helper, H. R., The Impending Crisis, New York, 1857. 
Schofleld, J. M., Forty-six Tears in the Army, New York, 1897. 

Collins, W. H., The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States, 
New York, 1904. 

Documentary History of Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Flem- 
ing, Cleveland, 1906. 



126 Negroes and Iheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 

Du Bois, W. E. B., Suppression of the Slave Trade, New York, 
1904. 

Olmsted, F. L., A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1853-54, 
New York, 1904. 

Schwab, J. C, The Confederate States of America, New York, 1904. 

Eckenrode, H. J., The Political History of Virginia during the 
Reconstruction, Johns Hopkins Press. 

Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming, 
Morgantown, W. Va. 

Bassett, J. S., Slavery in the State of North Carolina, Johns Hop- 
kins Press. 







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